Tears come to my grandma’s eyes when she tells us goodbye and thanks us for coming to visit. “I’m not worthy,” she says. Silly Grandma. We have visited her seldom, far less often than she deserves. She probably won’t last much longer now, my aunts tell us. Her kidneys are failing, and she won’t go to the hospital for medication. She is ready to die, anxious for it.
Grandma is short and old and plump—like she has been for as long as I remember—but she sits in a wheelchair now, and wears a bib when she eats. She has not lost her optimistic nature. Even though her eyes keep drooping shut, she tells us she never feels tired. “When other old people say how tired they get, I just look at them.” This visit, I realize for the first time how much she reminds me of my dad—the odd blunt comments, the practicality of her, the friendliness in spite of all that.
She once ran out of salad while serving a meal, so she passed around a head of lettuce for the guests to cut their own. She used to buy hosts of things on sale, whether or not she actually needed them. She saved things. Once, at a restaurant, she couldn’t eat all her fish, so she wrapped it in a napkin and put it in her purse. A few days later, as she knelt in church, she smelled something peculiar. She thought it was the woman next to her until she realized it was the fish.
She speaks with the Deutschy accent of a native Pennsylvania Deutsch speaker. I grew up hearing Dad talk that language with her on the phone—a language earthy, practical, comforting: smelling of barns, scratchy with everyday details, clucked back in the throat like a duck brooding ducklets.
I know my Grandma for many things, but most of all for her prayers. In the old days, when she herded my dad and his sisters and brother out the door for school, she always stopped at the door to pray with them. “Just in case,” she would say, “Jesus comes today.” If my grandpa didn’t want a thing to happen, he would tell Grandma not to pray for it—her prayers so often came true.
She prayed perhaps the bravest and most desperate prayer of her life when my dad was thirteen years old and ran away from home. She found him a few days later in the attic, hiding out with cans of beans and sour milk. But his homecoming didn’t last. A few months later, after a discipline conflict, he told authorities he didn’t want to live with his parents anymore. They made him go to church, he said, wouldn’t let him go to high school; and he didn’t want anything to do with their religion. The judge sent him to live in a foster home.
“I didn’t really worry about him because I knew God was taking care of him,” Grandma tells me.
My grandma knew. A year and a half later, my dad returned. Then God answered an even greater prayer of hers. Sixty-two years later, I hear the trembling gladness in her voice when she tells me how he came down the stairs one morning and said, “Mom, guess what? I’m a Christian now. I gave my heart to Jesus.”
“That was so wonderful,” she says. “So wonderful.”
And now she has come to this: an old lady in her wheelchair whose kidneys are failing, who can no longer remember all the prayers she prayed or all the ways that God worked. But that he has worked she knows. And that he has worked—after eighty some years of trying his promises—her prayers and her simple belief in him testify.
***
This post was first published in the Mennonite World Review, where I write a column every six weeks.
You gotta love a godly woman who passes around a head of lettuce when she runs out of salad – ha! I see smiles on sad eyes here. Except for Grandma, who is looking to what’s ahead.
Beautiful testimony! Oh that I could leave anything close to that when I pass. Thank you for sharing.
I love this. My mom is in this stage now. Her memories slowly fading. But she prays. And yes, God hears.
But there are days I miss my mom. The woman that she was. I think it’s harder to watch someone grow old than to be old. I guess we all will one day, if the Lord allows, find out.
That’s an interesting thought, I had never considered before…which is harder? I remember an older gentleman who used to always say, “Getting old is not for sissies.” I guess, like you say, we’ll find out.
Thank God for Godly, faithful women! Thank you for sharing Luci.
Grandma is short and old and plump – reminded me of my Grandma. Standing next to her when I was 13, I could see the top of my Grandma’s head. I am 44 now and still only 5 feet tall. I remember as a teenager my Grandma telling me, as I would leave her house after mowing the lawn, “Come see me…” I would basically disregard her request, not even realizing she was old and growing older. Always thinking I had time. I know now that she knew time is short. Thank you for sharing Luci. God bless you and your beautiful family.
Thanks for sharing this, Paul. I know what you are saying about being young and not realizing that time is short. I’ve only begun recently to really appreciate just how special both my grandmas are.
Beautiful testimony of your Grandmother’s. Thanks for sharing her with us.
I know your grandma as a little girl I visited at her house alot was a friend of Grace your grandma is special
Yes she is. :)
Oh how I love dear old grandma’s!! I had to laugh how she thought the lady in church beside her stank, only to realize it was her fish!! I really wonder what quirky stories my children will tell of me when I’m old and senile! Prayer warriers…….a challenge to me, am I up for it?
Love this! The fish story is hilarious. The lettuce story reminded me of when my grandmother, a wonderful Pennsylvania Dutch cook, passed hamburger buns around the table as dinner rolls because she didn’t have “real” dinner rolls on hand but God forbid u didn’t serve bread at every meal. They came from a generation who made do with what they had.
Thanks for sharing! Wonder what my children and grandchildren will say about me. Help me to be faithful to the end. You brought laughter(Fish story) and tears (story of your dad). I think we need to be honest with the lessons and stories of life. Learn from the past so we don’t make the same mistakes. .Keep on inspiring others!
Thank YOU. And Amen.
We as a family spent many evenings at your grandparent’s house in IN. Edna made the best homemade ice cream! Yes, it’s hard to see old people get older. Their goal is heaven which they long for!
I guess I should’ve signed my name to that anonymous post! Dar Hershey
Thanks, Dar. It’s good to hear from you. And special to hear about the times you spent at my grandparents’ house.
Thanks for sharing Luci. The power of story and of life, when we are honest and real. Maybe Grandma knew better how to do that (honest and real) than me and my generation?
Your grandmother sounds like a wonderful woman!
I am enjoying reading your earlier posts and had to comment on this one. The fish 🤣🤣 Oh the faith it would take when your runaway teenage son goes into foster care! Thankful that story has a happy ending.
Yes. 😂 Thank you for commenting.