SaraEileen.com

Monday morning I overslept, caught a late train and went to see my grandmother, Dor. I was supposed to fly to Maine, but my mother called me on Saturday when I was back in the city and told me I should go see her instead. “Sooner rather than later,” my mother said.

Dor had a stroke last April, a month and a half after I flew away. I knew this; in my head, I knew it was so. I have the email still that tells me what happened.

That knowledge didn’t really follow through to any logical conclusions, though. She wasn’t well, but she still lived in her old house, sitting in her brown recliner with a bag of yarn tucked away somewhere because she can’t see well enough to knit the way she used to. Occasionally someone would come to the door, one of my cousins or uncles, and they would take her away somewhere to eat and talk, and she would still be telling stories of 50 years ago over and over. But none of that is true any more.

Except for her not being well. That part is true.

She lives in a nursing center, and she can’t exactly speak, as such. My uncle, late on Monday night, said that she can repeat back whole sentences if we say them first, but putting them together herself is too much. We end up guessing at everything she wants, holding options up in front of her for approval. Her bed and chair are surrounded by photographs. One of them is of my little second cousin, who was born after I left, and is a real person with a real face now, instead of an infant.

When I got to Dor’s room on Monday afternoon the nurse woke her, and my Dad left for the first few minutes to find a wheelchair. She was still half asleep, and I sat down next to her and damn it, burst out crying.

“It’s not you,” I said insistently. “I’m really glad to see you. It’s other stuff, I just broke up with my boyfriend and I don’t really know what I’m doing and I’m just a little wrecked. It’s not you, I promise.” I turned and got us each a tissue from the dresser.

When my Dad came back we put her in the wheelchair and I walked her up and down the halls trying to figure the place out. It’s built in a circle, always ending up back at the front door. Eventually we went to the long living room, and handed her bits of food and different drinks, thickened so that they make her muscles move more when she swallows. We talked, and I told a few stories about Sydney and my degree. She grew up in Australia. She’s one of the reasons I wanted to go there in the first place.

Dor would say things and I would try to understand them, but usually not manage it. My hearing’s not very good, so I worried that it was me and not her, that I would frustrate her more by not being able to understand her. The conversation moved in little waves, with long pauses. We were all lined up facing the windows. It started to snow.

In a moment of silence as we were sitting, Dor spoke again. “I forgot my voice,” she said suddenly.

I turned to her and thought that maybe I didn’t hear that right either. “You forgot your voice? ”

She nodded. “Yes.” Except now when she says ‘yes’ it sounds like ‘yez.’

“I hear you fine,” I said. “You sound good to me.”

I kept being warned that she looked different, but she doesn’t, actually. She is a little smaller, a lot weaker. Her voice is the same, except it doesn’t make words any more. She’s still stubborn and funny and hot-tempered.

We went back the next morning and she could walk in little stretches. When she couldn’t walk any more, I pushed her around and people said hello. We stopped at different doors and said hello to different small, grey-haired people in their own beds, surrounded by their own photos. We sat in the living room again and I drank a big cup of free coffee, and asked her if she remembered Australian coffee being really good. She nodded at me, smiled.

I realized then how much I was looking forward to hearing her tell stories of her Australia, of Melbourne button shops and the end of the war. I didn’t even know I was holding on to that idea. But I was.