Nan

From the quiet strength she saw in her grandmother's life and death, the author learns the secret to coping with life's difficulties.

By Rachel Wallace - Oberle

It's an incredible journey to accompany someone to the edge of eternity, knowing that as death's ornate door slowly opens wide, you are required to stand aside. Your presence is no longer permitted, but your loved one goes on and steps across the threshold. Without a sound, the portal swings shut, and you are left standing before it, alone. In the shadows of that place, the clinging clutter of this life crumbles. Before that massive immovable door, you stand stripped, shaken, awed, humbled, transformed, and then, with a deep trembling breath, you return to a world whose luster is somewhat paler, whose music is slightly off-key.

Nan was my bonus grandmother. By the time I reached the age of twenty-five, all my grandparents had passed away; when I married Jay and acquired Nan as part of the package, I was elated to establish a relationship with her.

She was a bright, unquenchable spark, a whirlwind of activity, a dynamo of energy, a formidable garage sale shopper, and an unending source of optimism and fierce determination. She didn't believe in just sitting around crocheting, although she did even that with finesse.

Nan's apartment was a magical and enchanted place. My children and I would ride the elevator up to the ninth floor for afternoon tea and step out into the hallway to see her twinkling in the doorway of #914. She loved to wear long, flowery skirts, shiny slippers, frilly blouses, sparkly belts, yards of chunky beads, dangling earrings, rhinestone brooches, lots of bracelets, and numerous rings. Whether any of it matched was irrelevant. Barrett and Thomas would enter reverently, eyes as wide as saucers, with admonishments to touch absolutely nothing ringing in their ears.

Every available inch of the apartment was adorned with antiques. The paintings she produced in astonishing numbers marched across the walls. Garage sale treasures were crammed in between expensive knickknacks. Clocks ticked and chimed and bonged and cuckooed. A canary sang in the corner. It was a dizzying, delightful celebration of who Nan was and what she loved.

Her energy seemed boundless. The apartment was not only immaculate but entire rooms of furniture would be rearranged from week to week. I often wondered how she managed to negotiate midnight trips to the bathroom. Beds travelled from one bedroom to another. Dressers were hauled on strips of carpet from the pink bedroom to the hall to the painting room to the blue bedroom and then back again to the pink bedroom. A huge cupboard of antique dolls vanished from the hall only to reappear in the back room.

"Slow but steady; that's the secret," she would say sagely. "Pull, don't push and just keep at it."

Each visit was a bit of an adventure as well as an inspiration - I usually left with renewed resolve to dust and clean and smarten up my own house.

The quality I admired most in Nan was her strength. I saw it surface often during her long and debilitating struggle with ulcers. It was a battle that lasted more than twelve years, yet as those horrible sores worsened and multiplied, her pluck and fortitude burned brightly. She was not inclined to complain or despair or quit. She kept on going even though the furniture didn't move quite as often, the paintings took longer to finish, and the lure of garage sales lessened.

Shortly after Nan had been admitted to the hospital for the last time, unaware that she would never leave, I ran into a friend there who had become a nurse. "Who are you visiting," she asked. When I told her, she exclaimed, "That's your grandmother? We just love her! She's so amazing!"

For a long time, Nan talked about getting better and going home, but the skin grafts were unsuccessful. Her appetite, meager to begin with, waned; she lost weight. I noticed clumps of hair on the pillow. Heavily medicated in order to cope with the extreme pain, she drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes, to reassure myself that she was still breathing, I watched the little pulse at her throat. Though her tiny frame seemed impossibly frail, that flicker of life beat strongly. "Slow but steady; that's the secret," I could almost hear her say.

Even then, on some of her worst days when the agony of bedsores, infected graft sites, and gangrenous ulcers crept through the morphine, her response to "How are you doing?" was a whispered, "Oh not so good and not so bad." Dark fluids leaked through and stained her thick bandages. The smell was, at times, unbearable.

As her body weakened her smile grew sweeter. The reserve she had always cloaked herself in slipped, and she glowed with a new tenderness and appreciation for people. Traversing that vast desert of adversity, she discovered the riches of relying on others.

On a Saturday afternoon I spent some time with Nan. She was heavily sedated and semi-comatose; my efforts to wake her were unsuccessful, so I read to her from a little book about heaven titled Within the Gates. Remarkably, as I held her hand and told her not to be afraid, that it was okay for her to go, her eyes fluttered open a few times. When I told her that I loved her, her hand began to shake.

The next morning at 5 o'clock, Nan stepped over the threshold of death's door and into the arms of her waiting Lord. Every family member had been prepared for this and longed to see her at peace, yet after that portal swung silently shut, the luster of this world seemed somewhat paler, its music slightly off-key. I thought I was prepared. I thought her anguish had readied me. But there is no preparation. Ever.

From her life of quiet strength and impressive dignity in the midst of unrelenting pain and suffering, I will carry these words and do my best to apply them when things become difficult , "Slow but steady; that's the secret. Pull, don't push and just keep at it."

Rachel Wallace - Oberle is a freelance writer and lives in Elmira, Ontario.