My Oma was born in Germany in 1914.
I still remember her when her grey hair was a little thicker, and she didn’t yet have dentures. She would wear lipstick sometimes when she took us out to eat at the Mandarin for every birthday.
When we would go back to her house in Brampton, there would always be fancy chocolates and Tropicana orange juice in the fridge to fill our tummies. Even though we’d just finished a buffet, Oma was prepared. She knew our stomachs never really filled.
Oma had the neatest writing, all her birthday and Christmas cards to us had words perfectly flowing across the inside. She would always be more than generous, she contributed to my education every year, long before I even knew what the word education meant. She donated to many charities, she had many dog and cat shirts that the humane society sent to her. She was the nicest great grandma.
But even nice great grandmas get older.
It’s July 26th, 2017 and she’s at Humber River Hospital in Toronto lying in a hospital bed on the ninth floor. Our Oma is fighting off congestive heart failure and pneumonia at one-hundred-and-two years old. She flashes in and out of consciousness. “Where am I, somebody please help me,” she whimpers. Wherever she is in her mind, she is lost and she is alone. My great grandmother, who has lived through both World Wars and knows more about the world and about life than I can possibly know, is now so vulnerable and lost. “I love you Oma,” I tell her, and sometimes, she’ll say she loves me too. It breaks my heart to see my family, my 82-year-old grandma and my 88-year-old grandpa, my mom, my sister, and my brother all crowded around her hospital bed peering down at her. I wonder how she feels, having all these faces crowded around her. Does she know she’s dying? She makes eye contact with us. I count to ten in German, and sometimes she pitches in too. "Eins, Zwei," I say. “Drei,” she helps me out.
I tell her everything is fine and that the nurses will make her all better, but I don’t know who I’m trying to protect, her or myself.
My sister and I stay the night at the hospital, and I bring blankets and snacks my mom packed for us to help get us through the night. Nobody likes the thought of Oma being alone. We take shifts throughout the night, alternating sitting beside her bedside. When Oma wakes up and says “where am I?” or “somebody please help me” one of us is there to calm her down. “You’re at the hospital Oma” I tell her, but she finishes her sentence and starts right up again with “where am I?” I pray she’ll go back to sleep so I can too, but now I wish she had stayed awake and I had appreciated that time a little more.
When my turn comes to sleep, I lie on the chair in the corner and drown out the sound of Oma’s cries of “where am I?” with music on my iPhone. I don’t think Oma knows what an iPhone is, I wish I could tell her and she would understand. More than anything I wish I could say thank you for everything she’s ever done for me and she would understand that too.
She was doing better too, she got released from the hospital and went back to the Bakers Centre, the nursing home where she lived. I tricked myself into thinking that she was going to be okay.
My Oma was a fighter. She was not wasting away, all waxy skin and arms swollen from congestive heart failure her one hundred-and two-year-old body was fighting. My poor Oma, her arms were all filled with fluid and bruised shades of green and blue and black from the nurses taking blood and trying to save her life. In trying to save her, maybe it caused more pain. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted her to survive. I know she must have been in pain, but I wanted so badly for her to be okay.
I wanted to say thank you for all the hugs, for all the times she took us to Mandarin for our birthdays. It feels like yesterday that she was living on her own at ninety-nine years old. And then, the summer before I started university, we’re moving stuff out of her house in Brampton, and she was moving in with my grandparents because she couldn’t live alone anymore. But still she smiled, I remember for her one-hundredth birthday I sat outside with her on the porch, she enjoyed being outside. She sat there with a purple flower in her hair, and I swear being outside she lost seventy years of her age. She was laughing, she was twenty years old again. All of a sudden the dementia was gone.
We shouldn’t have ever gone back inside, we should have stayed on that porch forever.
After that she went to the nursing home, and it was a lot of down hill after that. It was always too warm and depressing in there, even with its high ceilings and big windows. I think being around other old people who were deteriorating made Oma deteriorate too. And I never visited enough, why didn’t I visit more? I went to school in the same city, and now I’m wondering after its too late why I didn’t make more of an effort to go say hello.
Her funeral is tomorrow, it should have been her one-hundred-and-third birthday, but instead my great grandmother is gone. I will never have another Oma. I should be there in Toronto, but I’m instead going to be at work in a different province. I have to make money and survive, but all I can think is that I wish my Oma had survived too. Even though we all got the chance to say goodbye, even though she lived a lot longer than most people are lucky enough to, one-hundred-and-two years wasn’t enough. It could have been all the time in the world, and it still wouldn’t be enough. That kind soul with the cat shirts and thick grey hair, who occasionally wore lipstick and had such a generous heart, she deserved to live forever.
I still remember her when her grey hair was a little thicker, and she didn’t yet have dentures. She would wear lipstick sometimes when she took us out to eat at the Mandarin for every birthday.
When we would go back to her house in Brampton, there would always be fancy chocolates and Tropicana orange juice in the fridge to fill our tummies. Even though we’d just finished a buffet, Oma was prepared. She knew our stomachs never really filled.
Oma had the neatest writing, all her birthday and Christmas cards to us had words perfectly flowing across the inside. She would always be more than generous, she contributed to my education every year, long before I even knew what the word education meant. She donated to many charities, she had many dog and cat shirts that the humane society sent to her. She was the nicest great grandma.
But even nice great grandmas get older.
It’s July 26th, 2017 and she’s at Humber River Hospital in Toronto lying in a hospital bed on the ninth floor. Our Oma is fighting off congestive heart failure and pneumonia at one-hundred-and-two years old. She flashes in and out of consciousness. “Where am I, somebody please help me,” she whimpers. Wherever she is in her mind, she is lost and she is alone. My great grandmother, who has lived through both World Wars and knows more about the world and about life than I can possibly know, is now so vulnerable and lost. “I love you Oma,” I tell her, and sometimes, she’ll say she loves me too. It breaks my heart to see my family, my 82-year-old grandma and my 88-year-old grandpa, my mom, my sister, and my brother all crowded around her hospital bed peering down at her. I wonder how she feels, having all these faces crowded around her. Does she know she’s dying? She makes eye contact with us. I count to ten in German, and sometimes she pitches in too. "Eins, Zwei," I say. “Drei,” she helps me out.
I tell her everything is fine and that the nurses will make her all better, but I don’t know who I’m trying to protect, her or myself.
My sister and I stay the night at the hospital, and I bring blankets and snacks my mom packed for us to help get us through the night. Nobody likes the thought of Oma being alone. We take shifts throughout the night, alternating sitting beside her bedside. When Oma wakes up and says “where am I?” or “somebody please help me” one of us is there to calm her down. “You’re at the hospital Oma” I tell her, but she finishes her sentence and starts right up again with “where am I?” I pray she’ll go back to sleep so I can too, but now I wish she had stayed awake and I had appreciated that time a little more.
When my turn comes to sleep, I lie on the chair in the corner and drown out the sound of Oma’s cries of “where am I?” with music on my iPhone. I don’t think Oma knows what an iPhone is, I wish I could tell her and she would understand. More than anything I wish I could say thank you for everything she’s ever done for me and she would understand that too.
She was doing better too, she got released from the hospital and went back to the Bakers Centre, the nursing home where she lived. I tricked myself into thinking that she was going to be okay.
My Oma was a fighter. She was not wasting away, all waxy skin and arms swollen from congestive heart failure her one hundred-and two-year-old body was fighting. My poor Oma, her arms were all filled with fluid and bruised shades of green and blue and black from the nurses taking blood and trying to save her life. In trying to save her, maybe it caused more pain. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted her to survive. I know she must have been in pain, but I wanted so badly for her to be okay.
I wanted to say thank you for all the hugs, for all the times she took us to Mandarin for our birthdays. It feels like yesterday that she was living on her own at ninety-nine years old. And then, the summer before I started university, we’re moving stuff out of her house in Brampton, and she was moving in with my grandparents because she couldn’t live alone anymore. But still she smiled, I remember for her one-hundredth birthday I sat outside with her on the porch, she enjoyed being outside. She sat there with a purple flower in her hair, and I swear being outside she lost seventy years of her age. She was laughing, she was twenty years old again. All of a sudden the dementia was gone.
We shouldn’t have ever gone back inside, we should have stayed on that porch forever.
After that she went to the nursing home, and it was a lot of down hill after that. It was always too warm and depressing in there, even with its high ceilings and big windows. I think being around other old people who were deteriorating made Oma deteriorate too. And I never visited enough, why didn’t I visit more? I went to school in the same city, and now I’m wondering after its too late why I didn’t make more of an effort to go say hello.
Her funeral is tomorrow, it should have been her one-hundred-and-third birthday, but instead my great grandmother is gone. I will never have another Oma. I should be there in Toronto, but I’m instead going to be at work in a different province. I have to make money and survive, but all I can think is that I wish my Oma had survived too. Even though we all got the chance to say goodbye, even though she lived a lot longer than most people are lucky enough to, one-hundred-and-two years wasn’t enough. It could have been all the time in the world, and it still wouldn’t be enough. That kind soul with the cat shirts and thick grey hair, who occasionally wore lipstick and had such a generous heart, she deserved to live forever.