Moot Thoughts & Musings

This afternoon I got up from my nap and walked into the kitchen where I saw my grandma mopping the floor! I scolded her, I came all this distance, and you're mopping the floor when I could? I took the mop from her and finished up the bathroom floors, too, and she laughed a little sheepishly.

In her early 20's my grandma had a car accident and broke her neck. She's been paralyzed on the left side ever since. While paralyzed she raised my dad single-handedly, taught first grade for a hundred years, lived by herself, did yard work, and kept the attic from gaining old-people clutter. Over the past ten years she's gone from starting to use a cane regularly to a walker and now to a motorized wheelchair. She's done physical therapy to retain as much movement as possible and recently had to have surgery on her spine. She's now packing up her home and selling it and moving into my great-uncle's house in Pensacola where she'll have her own bedroom and bathroom and thermostat. My other great-aunt and uncle have been here since her surgery about a month ago helping her pack up, and I'm doing the best I can to cheer and to help. The baby definitely helps on the cheer factor.

So why is my grandma mopping her kitchen floor? I had to laugh a bit to myself, because I see so much of myself in her. She's independent and a bit stubborn, though not obnoxiously so, at least I don't think so. When I came into the kitchen this afternoon, it's like it hadn't occurred to her that somebody else could do it. She saw the floor and set about it. Sometimes I offer to do something and she'll say, "it's allright, i've got it." and she does and doesn't mind. But sometimes she'll let me help and make job lists. If I say, "it's allright, I've got it." She'll let me alone to "get it." I get grumpy the way she gets grumpy. I laugh hysterically about the same things she laughs hysterically. When I was seven and visited her for three weeks, we had an ongoing joke about going berserk that we would just laugh and laugh over. We even look like each other! It's nice to have one person in the world that you get and that gets you in that unique way. She wants to die and go to heaven, weary of this world's pain. It makes me a little sad.