I spent today at my parents’ place in King City. My grandmother, who has been very ill for months, has finally come home from the hospital and is living with my parents.
I passed most of the day with her. It’s strange to see her so fragile and powerless, challenged to even lift herself off her bed. She stares in resignation at the middle distance, when I help her up. It’s a stare of resignation, frustration and a little shame. Her weakness and vulnerability represents a reversal for me – she was always my bedrock of strength. She has a big personality, as so many in my family do, and feeling weak often makes her bored and restless and annoyed. When I was growing up, my mother and father were extremely busy in their professional lives, so my Macedonian grandmother and grandfather, who had lived with us since their family had immigrated from Cairo, Egypt, pretty much raised me.
My grandparents were a lot older than me, and never bossed me around – their parenting was reasoneda and full of nostalgia for a mythical “old country” that they didn’t even belong to ethnically (Egypt). Their caring and love was motivated by an excitement to understand the world and excel in it. They pushed me to find my place and add my own voice to the chorus singing the beautiful song of Canada, their adopted nation. My grandfather died very young, when I was 7. I will tell the story of his last words to me one day – they were beautiful and profound.
My grandmother guided me firmly through my studies, through my interpersonal relationships, through the trials and tribulations of my adolescence. Her strength pulled me through my difficult teenage years, when I rebelled against my parents but rarely did I rebel against my grandmother’s gently mocking tones. Rebelling against her experience, her kindness, the depth of her feeling just felt lame. So I didn’t.
Now she’s weak. She can hardly get around. I had to push her around the house in her wheelchair and help her get in and out of bed. Our roles are reversed – I am strong and have the will to live and she feels sick and hopeless. It feels strange to be so indispensable to her – she couldn’t do anything without my help. It gave me a feeling of quiet and also one of profound sadness. I felt a sort of passing of the torch.
This has been an unsettling, moody day. It’s been a tough month for me. A month of great personal loss and life-changes.
I lie now, as I type this, in the dark of night and see the flicker of the stars through my bedroom window. Their twinkles are eternal – light sent across time from ancient days. I’m thinking about how we send messages from one generation to the next, how we transfer our wisdom and grow together.
It’s painful and beautiful all at the same time.