Grief, memories and grandmothers
Last week, just shy of her 100th birthday, my grandma died. She was the last of my grandparents. Some thoughts on her life, loss, and the passing of time.
Usually, I write about US politics in this space - but something happened last week that threw me off track, so this post is off-topic. What happened to me has probably happened to the vast majority of you: My grandma died. Grandma Gertrud was the last of my grandparents' generation who was still alive. And because death turns everything upside down, and no matter how hard you try, you can't really prepare for it, I want to write about my grandma here today - and about my memories of her.
My grandma Gertrud was born in Saarbrücken in 1924. She almost experienced a full century - in January she would have celebrated her 100th birthday. For her, to be that old was absurd - she told me several times that she didn't recognize herself when she looked in the mirror. I wonder what that must be like. Grandma said that she never felt older than fifty - at least not mentally, and that sometimes she wondered "who is that old woman looking back at me" when she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror.
Many of us know this feeling, no matter how old we are - at some point, for me it was some time after the age of 21 or 22, when the number on the front birthday card just keeps increasing, our head and heart can't quite keep up. 30? Already? Didn’t I just complete the first week at university? Then it’s 40, 50, 60, yet it feels like only a few moments have passed since you started your first job, since your child clutched your index finger for the first time as a baby, since they took their first staggering steps, since they started school. It sounds like the kitschiest, most generic thing to say - something you might find stitched onto an embroidered pillow or a flowery wall calendar - but it’s true: time rushes by. I wonder what it must have been like to have seen so much, to be 99 years old. Often, I think, it was quite lonely.
Once, I was in Grandma's apartment - before she went to live a nursing home about two years ago because she could no longer live on her own, even with medical assistance - and I found her black, leather notebook while cleaning up. "Grandma, where should I put this?" Grandma sat in her armchair - the one she inherited from her own grandma, the one my grandpa always used to sit in - and waved her hand in the air. "You can throw that away, they're all dead," she said, and laughed. She didn't sound like she found it particularly funny. She laughed anyway. What else was there to do? I gave her a squeeze, not knowing what to say. What do you say to that? To something so incomprehensibly sad?