Sweet Water and Bitter

(Image by Ambro, courtesy of FreeDigitalImages.net)

My husband’s grandmother has to move, and it makes perfect sense for her to do so.  She’s been a widow for–gosh, must be nearly fifteen years by now. She was always a homemaker and never learned to drive, so with her husband’s passing, the active years of her life came to a sudden halt. She’s been awfully lonely, and more so with each passing year. She hopes for visits on Sunday afternoons from one of her five children or maybe some other relative. Sometimes someone comes, sometimes not. She never has been able to sleep in a bed since her husband died,  so she catches forty winks in her recliner. She never cared to cook for just one, so she doesn’t eat very healthfully.

She’s lived in her little frame house for fifty-six years. Back then, Callaway Mills was everyone’s employer; a  strong, thriving backbone to the little community, and to hear my husband’s parents (who grew up as next-door-neighbors) tell it, the mill children might have had more fun than the rich folks. A swimming pool and skating rink were provided by Callaway, as were baseball fields. There was a grocery store in the community, and several churches in walking distance. All the neighbors worked and worshiped together, and it was a fine place to raise a family. But now the mill has been shut down for many long years, and the neighborhood is not so desirable anymore. We are not entirely sure of Granny’s safety there, and she’s certainly unable to manage any upkeep on the house or yard.

She’s declined a lot in the past couple of years. Her mind seems fine, but her hearing’s going and her arthritis leaves her nearly unable to scrawl her name on our birthday cards. She has a walker but doesn’t like to use it, so she’s taken a few falls. This last time, after she was safely rescued, her children descended on her and said Enough is enough. We’re not asking you, we’re telling you. It’s time to move.

We’d tried for years to encourage her to move, but she would have none of it. She called her husband by his nickname, Sleepy, and she would say, “Sleepy left me here and this is where I’m staying.” This was sentimental talk, of course, and we pointed out rather bluntly that Sleepy wasn’t coming back and would want her to be somewhere secure.  She wouldn’t hear of it. But this last tumble must have scared her, because the kids told her she was moving and she simply agreed and put the matter into their hands. They will handle the sale of her house, the moving of her belongings, the getting rid of what needs to go, and the transferring of utilities. And she is a very blessed lady to have a place to go! Only a few miles from her current home, my mother- and father-in-law live. And they happen to manage a small rental complex, just around the block from their house. Another of Granny’s daughters (plus an adult granddaughter) live in one of the apartments, and there’s a vacancy right next door to them. Neat as a pin, small and affordable. Perfect! We rejoice for her that while she’ll be within four new walls, all else will be familiar. The town and the faces, she knows. She can still go to familiar businesses, and see her same doctors. That should help.

Not every older person is so blessed. When I was a little girl, I lived in a small town, a portion of which is pictured at left. The Historic Grill in the photo was, back then, an office where my great-uncle worked. (Fans of “The Walking Dead” may recognize this scenery. The TV show is taped in my hometown.) Anyway, right next to the office was a grocery store owned by my other great-uncle (the first one’s brother). Meanwhile, a hop and a skip away, I was growing up in a house with their third brother, my great-grandfather. (And my parents.)

My great-grandfather, whom I called Poppy, was (or seemed to be) an ancient man, even when I was born. He was certainly an old-timey man, at any rate. I never saw him dress in anything but suit pants and a button-up shirt, and often a suit jacket and a hat. I never remember him walking without a cane. We lived with him in the house where he and his late wife had spent their fifty-plus years of marriage, and he spent many a day just sitting on the front porch. He would whistle to catch the attention of the occasional semi-truck driver who passed the house, only to throw up his hand in a wave to them. He explained to me that he made this gesture of kindness because the truckers got “lonesome” on the road. Poppy went to church faithfully on Sundays and and he loved to watch Lawrence Welk and Perry Mason. I believe he must have relished the independence of being able, even with his cane, to take a notion to walk downtown to the store and visit with his brothers.

But then one day his daughter came to get him. I was just a child so I am not sure why this happened. My parents had a hellishly unhappy marriage, so maybe she was removing him from unpleasant conditions. Maybe there was a disagreement of some sort. I’m not sure and there’s no one left for me to ask, so I don’t know how Poppy felt about this move. I can’t imagine it was anything other than traumatic and heartbreaking.

While his daughter had good intentions toward her father, she lived many miles away, in a larger town he didn’t know. And she lived, well, not in the country but not in walking distance of anything. She lived right off a very busy highway, and her porch was too far from the road for Poppy to wave at the truck drivers. How sad it must have been for a man in his eighties to be ripped away from everything and everyone he’d ever known. He didn’t live many years after the move.

To be honest with you, it was pretty difficult for my husband and me to get adjusted to life after moving to Florida in our forties. Look at that beautiful scenery! We moved to a good place but it took me a very long time to get over the feeling of being disconnected to everyone and everything I saw. There was no use scanning any crowd for old friends. There was no building or house where any portion of my life had taken place. I knew if I disappeared, nobody would realize I’d ever been here at all. It was very disconcerting. If you know any families who move far from home, keep them in  your prayers. They will tell you about all the good things, and probably won’t mention that empty feeling that they’re living a fake life. It really took a long time to get over that and begin to feel like a dual citizen of both my homes.

Some seniors may feel they won’t be around long enough to make the work of getting adjusted worthwhile. While a new home of their own or a place with family is surely better than a nursing home, I’m afraid their hearts may grieve for their real homes, and their absolute powerlessness to get back to them.

I think Granny will be okay, though. I think she’ll have many more visitors and much more activity. We, her family, are happy for her to open this new chapter in her life. And we think her beloved Sleepy would be happy, too. <3

 Image by Ambro, courtesy of FreeDigitalImages.net.