Yet another writing assignment (let me know when you get sick of reading these). This was a listen-and-write exercise, a sentence-by-sentence approach. Listen for a sentence. Write it down. The next sentence will already be forming as you write the first one. Listen for the next sentence, write it down. Keep going in this manner. What I learned from this exercise: the listen and write, listen and write format is a rhythm. Rhythm showed up in the piece I wrote - a memory, then back further into another memory, then forward again to the first one I started writing, then back again. I'm not known for rhythmic writing, and I thought it would be something I'd have to force. I also did very little editing as I wrote, also unusual for me. The piece has a better flow as a result of not doing so much editing-while-writing. Lots of sensory detail showed up, too. Anyway, here it is:
I finally learned to crochet properly. My mom and her mom and her mom's mom could do it disgustingly well, and my dad's grandmother, Wanda, could do it too. My attempts were always clumsy and uneven, and my wrist clicked. I'd give up quickly. But I figured it out this past Christmas. Mom showed me how to do it once again, and I haven't stopped. I'm addicted. All those yarn colors, all those crochet hook colors. I've finished a scarf that I'm sending to Mom. Crocheting is a form of meditation, I think. The repetitive motion lets your mind wander. I think of my grandmothers when I crochet. I especially think of Wanda and when she left us.
Wanda died on a Saturday night of a combination of old age and despair and anger over ending up in a nursing home. I don't blame her if she decided just to give up rather than face countless more days in a shabby, dimly lit, musty-smelling place where the attendants park your wheelchair in front of a random window and leave you for hours at a time, and where there are so many other people, moving slowly, suffering pain, or fatigue, or boredom and either waiting to die or waiting for someone to die.
I had seen Wanda the previous Christmas. We wandered around until we found her, parked in front of a window, with a thin pale pink blanket thrown across her lap. Her clothes were too big for her, she'd lost so much weight. She moved her mouth but didn't speak. She wouldn't look at anyone. She acknowledged nothing, just stared straight ahead. Half-gone already, her body slowly finishing the process. Was she talking silently to Myron, my long-dead great-grandfather?
In her more active days, she had looked after a sheepdog named Peter (after St. Peter) that was bigger than she was and had learned how to lie on the floor with his paws together while Wanda said her morning prayers. Every time I visited her, she'd make waffles or pancakes or grilled cheese or hand me a box of sugar cookies she had made – always with red and green sprinkles on them. She constantly reminded me that she had bathed me in the sink when I was a baby. I'd make a point to go upstairs during my visits so I could walk past her sepia-toned wedding portrait hanging on the stairwell wall. It was taken in New Jersey in 1927. Wanda wore a knee-length dress with a long train and flapper headband. She held an enormous bouquet of flowers with thin ribbons trailing down. Myron was a handsome fellow with classic 1920s movie-star good looks, emphasized all the more in his tuxedo, with his hair slicked back.
The viewing the following Monday evening was noisy with talking and hugging and tinny muzak. Wanda looked quiet and relieved in her silver-blue casket - she had picked it out years ago; it was the same color as the car she used to drive. The flowers I had sent were the only white flowers in the room. I worried a little over that, and felt guilty for worrying.
I gave and received so many hugs. I was reminded of a similar scene when my grandfather died years ago from his third heart attack. I was four. We arrived at my grandmother's house in the middle of the night. It was dark and chilly in the breezeway. The family was lined up to give hugs. I felt wet cheek after wet cheek next to mine, my grandmother's the wettest of all, her hug the longest and tightest of all. I shouldn't have gone to my grandfather's viewing, my mother says. I was too young. I got up to the casket, saw him lying there, sleeping in the big box. I reached out to touch his hand and wake him up. His hand was cold and heavy. I understood just from that touch what everyone had meant when they said he was gone. I screamed. Mom escorted me out. No one seemed put out by my reaction, Mom says. Maybe they all wanted to scream too, but they were too old and wouldn't have gotten away with it.
We said the rosary at the end of Wanda's viewing, and as I began to go into that trance-like state that happens when you say words repeatedly in rhythm, my seven-year-old cousin leaned over and asked why we kept saying the same prayers again and again. Trust me when I say that trying to explain Catholic traditions to a seven-year-old is one of life's ultimate challenges. After the rosary, the priest, Father Arco, our favorite, said a few words. He is the type of priest who can quote Shel Silverstein in a sermon and make it sound so right, and he is the type of priest who tells me and my sister that we bring sunshine with us when we come to visit. He said that because we had sent Wanda to God with faith and love, we didn't really lose her at all. This was not a loss, just an ending, and naturally, Myron would look after her.
Mom told me the story of Wanda and Myron. They met when they were five years old. Myron insisted he'd marry her someday. He followed Wanda around for twenty years before she agreed. He called her "babe." Wanda was devastated when he died. He died in her arms, telling her "Babe, I'm sorry. I have to go now." She prayed a lot after that. She was so lonely and depressed. When she prayed, she asked how she was supposed to keep going without him. Once, after asking this question yet again, she distinctly heard Myron say, "Babe, look to your children."
Somehow, a bunch of us ended up at my grandmother's house for an impromptu late-evening dinner after the viewing. More noise, but punctuated, thankfully, with stories over pizza, stew, and ziti. I stood at the sink washing dishes with my sister while two of our cousins stood behind us and chatted with us. I never remember their names. They don't seem to mind.
The service the next day was at the church where my great-grandmother had been a member since the 1930s. Saint Mary's, the tiniest church, with the fastest service, only half an hour, and the most beautiful statues - my favorite is Saint Terese, dressed in browns, her arms full of red roses.
Six of Wanda's grandsons served as pallbearers. I sat next to Aunt Carol, the tiniest of women, with the most arthritic of hands. She only has half an ovary. The doctors told her and Hank they'd never have children, so they adopted two boys and two girls, and then proceeded to have six more children of their own. Hank is the healthiest sick person I know – he has leukemia, asthma, and heart problems. You can't tell when you look at him and talk to him. I suspect he takes after Myron, his dad. When he talks to you, he focuses only on you, and you feel special.
Father Arco appeared again, and led the service. Val, who had refused to wear black, and wore a colorful, flowy dress instead, delivered the eulogy - a list of Wanda's favorite things, and a list of our favorite things about her. Wanda loved family, crocheting, dogs, grandchildren, blackberry brandy, and faith. We loved her pierogies, her cookies, her sense of humor, her mannerisms, and her habit of blessing herself and saying a prayer before she drove anywhere.
My grandmother gave me a pair of Wanda's earrings, a smaller version of Wanda and Myron's wedding picture, and two table runners Wanda had made with crocheted edges. I'm crocheting a blanket with heavy, dark blue yarn and a hefty purple hook. I can still only do the single stitch pattern, but I'm damn good at it. The stitches and the edges are even and perfect. Next time I see Mom, I'll ask if she can show me how Wanda did the zig-zag pattern.
