Making a connection out of a grandmother's stubborn streak

By Elizabeth Livingston

September 28, 2005 | Here I was sitting rows away from a casket, crying over a woman I barely knew. I didn't want to see her yet. I was scared. I wanted to remember her as the skin and bones stubborn smoking grandmother I called Meme and not some cold corpse lying in a nice outfit with pretty makeup on and her hair all done up.

The majority of my life was spent moving around because my father was in the military. We spent a great deal of time in Texas and Germany unable to visit with my relatives. So when I finally had the chance to go with my mother to California for two weeks and spend it with my Meme and my uncles, I was excited and nervous to meet the people I had seldom talked to on the phone and received Christmas checks and presents from.

We arrived at my Meme's house late, after she had already gone to sleep, so our first reunion since the time I was 6 years old would have to wait until morning. When I awoke the next morning I could hear my mother and my Meme talking in the kitchen. I began to walk down the hallway anxious to see what she looked like and for her to see me. At the same time the thought struck me that here would be three generations of Gadbois women all sitting together under the same roof for the first time in over a decade, and that felt really cool.

When we met, I felt really awkward, not knowing if we should hug or just say hello to each other. She looked so fragile. At the time only 70 years old and she looked at least 90. She had been an avid smoker from the time she was young, and emphysema had her.

During my two weeks there we had celebrated her birthday with a cake and two boxes of Twinkies, her favorite. I got to know her. Maybe not a lot about her history, but a lot about her personality. She had a strong, stubborn character with a lot of wit about her. If somebody had wronged her or was in error, she was quick to put him in his place. She had firm beliefs in parenting and that belief in God was a good thing.

She told many stories about the hard jobs she had in life. My favorite story is about my great-great grandmother who took snuff and taught her to speak French.

I went back to visit the following New Year's. I went back again a little over a year later during my Spring Break in college and she got to meet my now-husband, Shane. They spoke French together and I felt she was fond of him for that. That was the last time I saw her like that.

A few weeks before Spring Break came, my Meme missed the chair she was aiming to sit in and broke her hip when she landed on the floor. By this time Shane and I had been dating seriously enough that he wanted to help me out. We were already planning to take a Greyhound bus to Southern California from Utah to visit her, but now that she had an accident, we were even more determined. I heard she wasn't doing so well and had been in a few hospitals.

When we got to California , Shane stayed at Meme's house and I went with one of her friends to go pick her up from the hospital. When I saw her I fought several urges to pass out. Aside from her usual scrawny disposition, she had tubes and needles coming out of her body. It made me sick to see her like that, in such a helpless state, unable to even reach for a bedpan.

We got her home and laid her on the couch, the place she had slept for the last 20 years since my grandfather died. She refused to sleep in her bedroom.

My Meme laid on that couch sick and calling out for death to come to her. Finally some nurses showed up to give her medicine and stay with her through the next several nights. When the nurses came they put her in a hospital bed and wheeled her into the bedroom. She woke up the day Shane and I had to leave to go back to school. She woke up calling for eggs (which she normally hates) and bagels and pancakes. She couldn't believe how hungry she was and that she had missed these last several days with her granddaughter. I introduced her to Shane and she spoke Canuck while he spoke French. It was fun to watch them and she praised him continually on his accent.

Finally it was time to leave and my Meme cried, wishing I could stay longer. I promised her I would come back and visit again in a couple months, as soon as I could. I left thinking she was getting better and that I really would get to see her in a few months.

Three months later when I was visiting my parents in Philadelphia , I walked into the house after spending an evening at the movies with my best friend. My parents looked at each other and said, "How do we tell her?"

It wasn't terribly surprising to hear my Meme had passed away, but it was still very upsetting. This was the first relative of mine I had felt close to who had died.

A few days later I was on a plane with my mother going to California . Shane had been staying with his family, also in California , and had agreed to meet us at my Meme's house. He was the one I used as a rock to lean on while my mother and her brothers played with the lawyers and made funeral arrangements.

So again, there I was sitting a few rows back from her casket with Shane on the side of me. I wore a shirt that she would've called classy, mostly because it looked like satin and I had grabbed it a short while before from her favorite store, the Goodwill.

I was holding in my hand a keychain I had mailed to her several years ago when I was a little girl in Germany . I had been in the grocery store line with my mother and saw a panda keychain holding a big pink heart that said "World's Greatest Grandmother." I had found it hung next to a collection of spoons she kept in the kitchen. I intended to "regive" it to her during her memorial service, but was scared to walk up and see her. I was more scared than the day we had our reunion.

After sitting and balling my eyes out for more than an hour on Shane's shoulder, I realized it was time. I walked up to the casket and looked in. My uncle came up and put his arm around my shoulder. I just stared at her thinking she looked so pretty and so nice in the light brown suit we had picked out for her.

That was it, the worst was over. I gently placed the keychain near her arm and said goodbye.

I don't know why I loved her so much. I hadn't grown up with her around as a constant presence.

Perhaps it was the fact that I have the Gadbois blood and could finally see where my own stubbornness was coming from. Or maybe it was the affection I felt as I realized she was my old lady and nobody else's (except for my brothers). Regardless, I hadn't gotten to know her very well but at the same time felt like I knew her so well.

I'm hoping that when I have a daughter some day, she will get to meet my mother and love her the same way I loved my Meme. I hope that she will get to see the stubbornness that seems to get passed through the genes. Mostly I'm just hoping she feels that connection I felt when I first thought "here sit three Gadbois women together under the same roof."

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