The smell of coffee wakes me gently each time I spend the night at my grandma's house. Meme, I call her. I barely crack my bedroom door and I'm already greeted by the softer scents of bacon, bread toasting, the general splendor of a morning in a grandma's house.
So soothing, my bedroom is. It's the back one, on the front side of the house. Floaty, sheer curtains cover the windows and mask the scandalous sunlight, collaborating with the blinds to leave just enough up to the imagination. The comforter and plush pillows are the coldest shade of blue. Cold colors make me feel right at home.
But there are certain colds I like, and certain colds I don't. I don't like a head cold. I don't like the unforgiving slap in the face from a bitterly cold wind, waltzing across the sky in perfect rhythm with ice, taunting me to the point of tears. And--my least favorite--the cold scent of inevitable decay, creeping through the walls into my room. It is death's predecessor, like John the Baptist is to Jesus, though far less wild and hairy.
It reaches its skeletal fingers up and around my neck, sneakily choking me, forcing out breath and life and feeling. Snuffing out a good day before the scent of it has even had a chance to permeate my room.
I venture out the door. I glance nervously to my right. I wrinkle my nose at the bed. The hospital bed, moved unceremoniously into the spare room, occupied by a helpless patient, offends me with its very presence. Stepping into that room is like stepping into a different world, a world where there is no hope, no joy, no purpose, no persevereance. Persevereance is pointless. Purpose is gone forever. Hope and joy are evasive and sneaky and as taunting as the icy wind in my face.
But she stares at the ceiling day after day. She wills her eyes open and she wills her lungs to breathe. She pushes past the pain and I don't understand why. I wouldn't. Some people wonder why many of my peers smoke and drink with as much dedication as Jay Gatsby. I think it's because many of them would rather die young and beautiful than old and useless and decrepit. But, life is the only thing she has left to fight for, so I guess she decided to dedicate all her energy to doing just that.
She's my great-grandma, my granny. She's so far from what we are, in appearance, in ability, in age, in everything. But she has a quiet contentedness that I will never know. She is not pestered by the cynicism of the age. She is not obligated to look dispassionately on life, to assume the attitude called "devil-may-care," to believe that knowledge is the only god, because she has a trophy case full of sufferings to remember. What do we have? Nothing.
We have the right to consume. We have the right to choose. We have the right to be right. We have the right to vote. We have the right to spend. We have the right to waste. We have the right to cry. We have the right to get our prescriptions filled and rack up credit card bills and drown our sorrows in tiny shot glasses of vodka.
We have lots of things. We have healthy hair and clear eyes and trimmed hedges and lithe bodies and prestigious jobs. We are at the center of our culture. We are at the top of the social ladder. And we have empty trophy cases. We have everything and she had nothing and yet she is the one making it in this world on exactly that. Nothing. She survives on nothing that is visible to us, at least. She is shoved to the margins.
And then there is my Meme, dutifully arriving with breakfast everyday, without fail, chopped up in tiny pieces so Granny can chew it with her gums. Bathing her body with the utmost care. Sitting up with her at night. Functioning as a sort of "Jesus" to the overlooked, the socially unacceptable, the marginalized. Functioning as Jesus did to the blind man, the Samaritan woman, the lame man. No one sees what she does. But she is reminding me that the ones whom society scorns are often the ones to whom Jesus gives special care, offering them living water when the rest of the world leaves them parched and dry.
Lord,
Give us eyes to see the ones who need our special care. Even if the situation seems hopeless, even if the rest of the world wouldn't give them a second thought, remind us to do so because Jesus would. Thank you for manifesting the joy of your kingdom here on earth through the life, death, and resurrection of your son. We love you.
Through Jesus, Amen.
Erin Daugherty
Abilene Christian University
I am stunned by your wisdom, not to mention your writing ability.
ReplyDeleteI wish everyone who is a caregiver like your Meme is to your Granny could read it.
The "quiet contentment" you speak of in your Granny; I recognize it in my Mother as her life fades in the Alzheimer's facility. Reading your beautiful words, I am (almost) able to think of her silence and her stare as contentedness, now in the absence of this world's cynicism, materialism, and striving for purpose and usefulness.
I hope your Meme has seen the blog. Your eloquent description of her in the last paragraph is very touching.