Memorial Day weekend Grandma took a turn for the worse and ended up in the hospital and she thought it was the end. She said her goodbyes on the phone to much of the family but then rallied over the next month. Giving me enough time to go see her twice, once alone and once with my kids when they finished school. Both times Grandma was very tired and mainly in her bed but you could lay down with her and chat. It was so great spending time with her. She was talkative and able to answer questions. At one point, I asked her what she thought heaven would be like and she answered unequivocally that she knew that there would be meadows and lots of flowers. I asked why she had that impression and she told me a story that I had never heard before.
Grandma said that right enduring a very difficult 18 hour labor then delivering my mom that she started hemorrhaging very heavily. (Side note, she said she paid for it all by herself despite the fact that the military could have paid for it because my mom's dad was an officer, but she didn't feel like it was right to take hand outs from the government when not everyone got the same treatment.) To try to stop the bleeding she said that they actually pivoted her gurney so her head was near the floor and her legs were high in the air. She said that she felt like her head was going to explode there was so much pressure on her brain and she was in a tremendous amount of pain. Suddenly, she noted, that she found herself completely liberated from all her pain and running carelessly in a gorgeous meadow filled with wildflowers. She said her body felt weightless and her movement was like something she had never felt before. While running, she came to an abrupt stop and the thought popped into her mind, "If I leave now, who will take care of my baby?" She knew she couldn't go and when that thought popped into her head she immediately returned to her body in the hospital and was woken up by the nurse aggressively slapping her face.
I got to hold Grandma's gnarled hands, pat her soft cheeks and rub her platinum hair. She was so sweet and submissive, which is not something I would ever use as a trait to describe Grandma Beth. She seems ready and resigned to the fact that she was dying. Most of her grandchildren were able to visit in her last days and my Mom, Aunt Viki, Ian and Ethan were with her in her house when she died. I'm so glad that she was surrounded by people she trusted and loved in her own home. I'm also so grateful for my Mom and Ethan who were instrumental in helping grandma stay in her home and remain so healthy for the final years of her life.
True to form, Grandma's last works were of love to those she always looked out for. A week ago, Ian and Laurel had just gotten back from Italy and they took their girls to see grandma. I was told that Grandma had been sleeping and non-respondent for the proceeding few days, but she opened her eyes for the Maddie and Kara and told them that she loved them. It is so typical that Grandma would look out for the littlest among us.
We are in Italy now visiting Aaron and Keri. It breaks my heart that I am so far away and will miss her funeral. It comforts me to know that Grandma would think it was absolutely ridiculous to pay the amount of money it would take to get us home for her funeral.
Grandma is a matriarch to remember. She is wise, caring, unconditional in her love, funny, present, undistracted, a great conversationalist and general "good company" (my favorite quality in a person). I will continue to love her fiercely and when I think or grandma, I always want to remember:
- Holding her hand on long walks on the beach.
- Collecting dried kelp pods for creating beach gulls when we returned to her house.
- Snail races in grandma's yard.
- Grandma's yard needs a memory all to itself. Until the last few years, I never realized how small it was because it always felt so big and mysterious, with gates to back alleys, laundry hanging on the line which created perfect hiding spots, an unattached garage full of forgotten items that were perfect for elaborate fantasies and wars with the cousins and of course a forbidden front yard.
- Grandma's house also needs a separate memory all to itself. It has also shrunk to me over the years, but I remember it always full of people, laughter, games til late in the night and friendly family gossip. I don't remember where we slept all those kids every summer, but I remember my favorite place to sleep was right by the wall furnace to maximize the heat on those cold Seaside mornings. Her kitchen was always full of the smell of bacon and guilty-pleasure coffee in the morning and some pot of soup at night (I'll never be able to eat a split pea, navy bean or any soup with "fresh herbs" without thinking about her again). Her bathroom always had a sandy tub from the residue of long days at the beach. Her back bedroom drawers had letters and pictures from days gone by that were the best fodder for imagining bootlegging days in Utah, a military grandpa I never knew, and my gorgeous mother, flanked by her handsome brother and sister in teenage and college years.
- Living with grandma after I graduated from college for a year. I called her my roommate and treated her like one too. I shared so many confidences with her. She gave me finance, friendship and dating advice and helped heal my heart after breakups. After her witnessing two relationships and breakups first hand and getting attached to the guys I was dating, she told me that I couldn't tell her about any more guys, it was just too hard on her to get her hopes up and then heart broken again.
- Watching her say her prayers, kneeling by her bed in her long nightgown every night.
- Witnessing grandma breaking up Jared and Ian fighting with a PVC pipe.
- Watching her roller blade on her 80th birthday?
- Watching her hair get lit on fire by the candles on her cake on her 100th birthday?
- Hearing her bear her testimony time after time, but particularly at Kennedy's baptism, where she said that she has seen the Savior walking by the early pioneers, teaching in Galilee and standing by her side in the most difficult and happy times of her life.
- Wanting my grandma just to live long enough to meet my husband, then seeing her do just that and learn to love him and then hoping and praying that she would live long enough to meet each of my kids then seeing her do just that and watching her love and know each one of them.
- Grandma calling everyone child, even my mother in her 70's.
- Grandma's huge hugs and wet kisses on the lips. If you tried to avoid the lip kiss she would grab your cheeks and direct your lips right to hers.
- Hearing Laurel and Amy calling her the "Sacred Cow" of the Fischer clan and agreeing wholeheartedly that I couldn't think of a single fault in her or allow anyone else to point out any others too.
- Meeting a resident of a homeless shelter for people with mental illness and drug addictions, that I was working at, who had lived with Grandma when he was young and that she made her home a very safe place to "go crazy".
- Seeing Grandma do her visiting teaching every month and take meals to people in need.
- Observing her opening her home to everyone in need.
- Being with her at my first time to the temple, when I left on my mission and when I returned, at grad school graduation and my wedding and at two of my children's baptisms.
- The feeling you get when you knock on her front door and hear her yell out "I'm coming" and then hear her shuffling to the front door.
- Feeling the sense of "home" and peace that is always present in her house. You always feel welcome and you always feel at ease.
- Napping on grandma's couch in a room filled with family with their chatter lining your dreams.
- Knowing that she was a chain breaker in our family and a path paver. Grandma overcame a difficult, poverty stricken, dismissive at best, abusive at worst childhood. Then overcame a broken relationship and later abandonment with her husband and the father of her children. To then master the raising of three children on her own, emotionally, financially, but never spiritually. Somehow, smiling through it all, never seeming burdened by her reality, seeing others people's trials as greater than her own and reaching out to them and always looking out for the little people around her.
