Granny

Granny's eyes have never looked so sad and empty as they do today. Her curly white hair is now matted against her head, and I don't think that I have ever seen her old body look so frail. It has been four years now since the stroke, and the doctors say that the only reason she is still holding on is because of that pacemaker they put on her heart eight years ago. It’s sad to look at her now because Granny's eyes were once so full of expression and now, looking at those same eyes, tells that she is ready to let go.

When I was a child, Granny's eyes were bright and full of life, a piercing crystal blue. There were a lot of wrinkles around them, but she was eighty years old, and she had lived long enough to earn a few of them. She stood about five feet tall then because of the osteoporosis, as she put it, bending her back over, she used to be a little taller than that. She was always chilled, and still needed a light jacket even when the mercury hit ninety degrees. She owned a pair of silver-toned house shoes, and when she wore them we called her "Granny Jetson" because they looked like space shoes. Granny's normally silver hair always looked purplish blue because of a rinse she used that was supposed to brighten it, and all my friends would always ask me why my Granny had purple hair.

Granny had gnarled fingers on tiny wrinkled hands, but she could still roll out her famous biscuits that would make our mouths water. She cooked all day long before company would arrive, preparing all of her specialties like fried chicken, squash casserole, fresh snapped pole beans, fried green tomatoes, and her signature banana pudding. Granny was a good cook, and we had to starve ourselves before we came to visit her so we wouldn't offend her by not being hungry after she had gone to so much trouble to cook for us. Cooking was her favorite thing to do, and she took great pleasure in watching everyone happily eat what she had prepared.

Granny had lived a hard life but she never complained about any of it. She always told her story about being the oldest girl of thirteen children who spent her childhood working in a factory. She would always smile when she told the story of how she ran away from home to marry when she was just sixteen. Her eyes looked sorrowful when she spoke of losing two children and her husband before she was forty-five years old. In spite of the losses that Granny had endured, she still managed to keep her spirits up and she always looked on the bright side of life. She was independent and active in the community and she always made sure she surrounded herself with all of her great-grandchildren. "Without y'all," she always said with a wink, "I would just be a regular grandmother."

I remember when Granny went to the nursing home, how upset she was that she could not live alone anymore. I remember many times when I would visit Granny and she would cry because she wanted to go home so desperately. I recall watching the happiness slowly fading from her striking blue eyes. The past four years since the stroke, Granny has not been able to speak to us and she can no longer see us through those crystal blue eyes. Looking into Granny's eyes, I cannot see the excitement and vitality that I remember seeing in them so clearly while I was growing up. Instead I see Granny's eyes telling me, "I've lived a long and happy life. This is not how I want to be remembered."

Slowly over the past decade, the expression has gone from Granny's beautiful blue eyes, and now she is detached from what was once an exuberant existence. When I bring my children, Granny's great-great grandchildren, to visit her, her eyes look a little brighter for a moment, and she clutches my hand tightly with her twisted, gnarled fingers and brings it to her softly wrinkled cheek. As those despondent, spiritless eyes stare through me, I remember how Granny used to be before the stroke had left her blind and paralyzed, and I hope that she will not have to endure much more of this lifeless existence that she is suffering.