This is My Oma

This is my oma (my maternal grandmother), shortly after she moved into an assisted living facility in March of 2010

This is my oma, two days ago.

 It’s absolutely terrifying how much she’s aged in just this year.  It’s silly, but I didn’t think she’d be...well dying this soon.  I’m 28 years old; I’m lucky to still have a surviving grandparent at my age.  Not a lot of people in my generation get to boast that.  Maybe it’s because she’s my last living grandparent, that I’m having a hard time coming to terms with this.

 

My opa, her husband, passed away when I was 13 years old.  It was 3 days before my parents got married.  It was pretty hard at the time but he was quite sick, so it didn’t come as too much of a shock.  That day, my mother woke me up in the morning and asked me to come downstairs to my brother’s room.  I got there and he was lying in bed in tears.  Never in my life, before or since, have I seen my brother cry (to my recollection) so I was pretty scared.  He’s my older brother and has always been the calm, pragmatic one.  For something to shake him to the point of tears, it’s not going to be good news.  At this point, my mother told me that Opa had died.  Mom explained how and when, and the three of us had a good cry together.  We then got dressed and headed out to have some breakfast.  It seems weird, but we were hungry and weren’t about to cook for ourselves at this point.  While at the restaurant, we relived memories of Opa and while it’s sad to think back on that day, it’s still an oddly pleasant memory and I felt it brought the three of us closer together.  I can’t even think of that restaurant without thinking of Opa and that makes me happy.

When my paternal grandfather died it was quite hard for me.  I was 15 and my biological father and I had just reunited and I had made plans to fly across the globe to visit him and his parents and other extended family members later in the year.  My parents and kid sister and I had planned on going there to visit my mother’s side of the family for a few weeks, so I was going to take the train to where my biological father lives and visit him for a few days.  Three or four months before we were going to take the trip, my biological father called to tell me that his father just died.  I was hit immediately with an odd sense of guilt.  

See, I hadn’t seen my paternal family for about 10 years by that point. My mother separated from my biological father when I was 7 years old and he went back to his home country (as I mentioned in my bio, I’m first generation Canadian.  Both my folks immigrated to Canada from the same country) where his family still lived.  It was a bit of a nasty divorce for reasons I will not go into, and his family decided to cut all ties with me.  It still sort of pisses me off to this day, actually.  Punish the 7 year old for something she had zero control over.  Way to go, adults.  Way to be the mature ones.  But I digress.  As I hadn’t seen my biological father’s side of the family for about a decade I had very few memories of them at that point.  Now I won’t be able to form any more memories of my grandfather.  I felt like I was to blame, somehow.  

When my paternal grandmother died, I’ll be honest, I didn’t care.  Still don’t.  A person has died, and that’s sad, but I felt/feel no emotional ties to this woman.  About 8 or 9 years ago (shortly after seeing my father for the first time in 10 years) I cut off all ties with my biological father – again.  He was a poison in my life and I didn’t have any time for it.  For years he would write me letters trying to send me on guilt trips for not speaking my mother tongue anymore, and then go into great length about how his mother was dying and how this was in some way my fault because I couldn’t communicate with her.  In 15 plus years, she made not one single effort to communicate with her grandchild, and somehow I’m supposed to feel bad about this?  It’s as if she forgot that she had 7 grandchildren, not 6.  

As you can see, there was/is no love lost for my biological father and his family.  So when my father wrote me a letter (in my mother tongue, when he full well knows I can’t read it) telling me that she’s passed away I had no reaction.  Frankly, I think my first thought was, “Finally”.  Not because I’m a vindictive cow or anything, but she’s been at death’s door for as long as I can recall.  She survived two bouts of breast cancer, had Hodgkin’s disease and various other serious illnesses.  She was not a healthy woman, and I felt as if finally she would get some peace and freedom.  While I feel no love for this person, I don’t like knowing that people are suffering with various debilitating diseases and illnesses.  

My oma is someone I really love and have had a chance to truly know.  She flew to Canada for a few weeks when my brother got married.  When I was pregnant with my son, she came to Canada again as he would be her first great-grandchild and even though she had to leave when he was not even 12 hours old (stubborn git was way late) she fell in love with him right away.  Once again, she flew to Canada shortly after my brother’s first child was born.  She does all this when she has serious arthritis and would get easily confused and disoriented, the older she got.  She was well into her 80s for each of the aforementioned trips, and these were transatlantic trips!  She has so much love for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and it kills me that my son, nieces and nephews probably won’t get the privilege of knowing her.  

My mother just recently flew over to spend some time with Oma and I really wish I was able to go with her.  I’ve mentioned before that I’m off work currently due to an injury that seems to have taken over my life.  As a result, finances and an inability to sit through a 9 hour flight prevented me from going, but perhaps for my mother that was for the best.  It seems she had a really great visit, if bittersweet.  My mother got to spend some real time with her mother without having to act as an interpreter or tour guide.  Yes, Oma wasn’t the vibrant, opinionated, active person she was the last time Mom saw her, but it was still good for my mom and for Oma for them to have this time together.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this was the first time Mom got to have this amount alone time with Oma in decades.  

I think I take for granted the fact that I have my mother so close to me.  If I want to see her and spend some with her, she’s within walking distance of me (when I’m not all banged up, like I am now).  Even when we were living in different cities, I still got to see my mother often.  Not nearly as much as either of us wanted, but it wouldn’t take a lot of planning or saving up for us to see each other.  I can’t imagine how difficult this time is for my mother.  I can’t imagine how difficult it has always been for her, not having her mom so close – geographically – to her and being able to see her whenever she wants to.  I know I would be pretty miserable if I was so far away from my mother.  We have such a strong bond – not just as a mother and her child, but as friends – that I’d feel as if a vital part of me were missing.  I don’t think I ever really appreciated the sacrifices she made when she left her country for good to move here.

This post is really taking a direction I hadn’t planned.  Mind you, most of my posts do.  I try not to edit them too much and just write what seems natural to me at the time.  Sometimes they are chaotic in their ever shifting direction; sometimes they are crisp, clean and succinct.  Either way, I find it therapeutic.  I sometimes worry that my posts are too maudlin or I’m trying too hard to seem cerebral. I’ve been having a hard time writing this particular post.  I’ve been working on this one for over a month now.  I wonder if maybe it’s too personal, leaving myself too open and vulnerable.  Exposing too much of my family history.  However this has been rather cathartic, and a bit of an eye opener.  

I have really no idea how to end this.  It feels like it’s hanging off a precipice somehow.  Inconclusive.  Unresolved.