I Miss Grampa

Grammie Titcomb and Prema

There is a history of my mother’s and her mother’s older years that I joined to the wound I brought into this lifetime to heal—my wounding of abandonment joined to their wounding of loss, sadness, and possible despair.

My mother succumbed to Alzheimer's in her 70s—leading to my father’s necessary decision to put her in a nursing home. In her marriage, she’d known a glass top dining table by a painting of three irises—the first art he’d bought her. Now for eight years her meals were in a lovely room—but not with the objects and people she chose. Each time he visited, she cried when he left.

My Grammie's one-room schoolhouse students called her Mrs. "Ticcum," finding her strict but caring. Grammie lived alone for twenty-seven years after Grampa’s heart attack. While her earliest words I remember as a girl are "There’s warm doughnuts in the kitchen" her last, on my infrequent visits, were "I miss Grampa."

When my second husband died, I knew that how I behaved was my compass—and my daughters'. I could appreciate him and feel gratitude for what we’d had, or grieve him over-long and know loss. I was able to make what I believe is the higher choice.

My realization is, "As souls we take on birth, bringing a wound to be healed or a lesson to be learned that may happen through the history of others as well as come from within."

"Grammie, plump around the middle in a bib-apron over her housedress, came down the steps, hurrying across the yard in her black, heeled shoes with laces, smiling and hugging, her eyes twinkling behind gold rimless glasses. “What have you young’uns been up to? There’s doughnuts!” And in a minute I was in the kitchen. My fingers sticky. My teeth pulling open the warm, brown crust. My mouth watering with sweetness."*

*A Flower for God