It is early morning…and it is raining. Once again, I am on my way to visit my grandmother's room in the hospital. Early dawn in this place is eerily silent. The corridor lights of the floor have not yet been lit. I walk into the darkness, the soles of my shoes squeaking like the windshield wipers of the passing cars outside. The morning's palest manifestation of light and shadow spills in through the cracks of the windows, casting melancholy in its wake.
I enter her room hearing the empty sounds
that I hear each day: the respirator keeping rhythm like a ragged timepiece in
measured expirations that signify a pulse, but really call out to me the ebb of a
heartbeat. The suction of the
nasogastric tube and the intravenous lines giving out occasional alarm bursts
caution my hope. This breathing I hear is artificial. An acrid smell hangs in the room and
wondering for only a moment if it is against hospital rules, I open the
windows. The raindrops splatter the
windowsill and my face, but the sound of the rain outside the room is somehow
soothing. As the fresh air pours
into the room, I remember that if it weren't for the sadness that the mother of my father weren’t here, in this bed,
dying, that it is springtime in my Florida home.
In this bed lies an elderly comatose woman,
her long gray hair tumbled across the pillow, the lines of her face tell the unconscious
narrative of a life.
Finally, I do not wonder who
she was. The expectant lift of her brow
is gone now. I can see the tiny blue lines
in her skin. She looks worn and tired,
but the remnants of a former beauty still remain. And with my twenty-something year old eyes, I
realize that the beauty of her youth has really given way to a deeper
kind.
While she lived, she was so strong, always
able and filled with endurance and courage that always came just when she
needed it. Her frailness now in this
bed, frightens me. Medicine offers nothing
to help her now. The stroke was
massive. I think how she would hate
this. No voice. No control.
As I look at her in this unwanted sleep, I remember that I am an
extension of her. I am reminded of my
own mortality.
I begin to do the things the nursing staff
does not do, things that would be important to her. I wipe her face with a warm cloth. I comb her hair that has become disheveled,
taking care that I do not pull too hard and that it is away from her face. I put lotion on her cheeks. They are dry, but smooth for an aged
woman. I adjust her gown and fluff her
pillow as much as I can without lifting her head, sometimes talking to her,
wondering if she hears. I try
anyway. I tell her things I always meant
to tell her. I tell her that I love her,
trying to remember if I have lately. And
inside my head, angry at myself for not saying it every time I saw her.
Her name was Joan Marie LeClaire
Kennedy. Once she was a beauty
queen. As a child, I had seen a picture
of a young woman in a drop-waist dress, twenties style, with bobbed, slightly-waved
hair. She was pretty, smiling, with her
arms full of flowers, and her eyes full of dreams.
Born in Kankakee, Illinois, she went to
Tampa, Florida with her contractor father, mother and sisters, May, Blanche and
Mary Louise. In 1928, she won the Miss
Tampa Beauty Pageant. Soon after, she
caught the eye of then County Commissioner Harry P. Kennedy, the grandson of
Thomas Pugh Kennedy who helped to found the city of Tampa. Despite a an age difference and some raised
eyebrows, she married him. It was scandalous. It was fabulous.
Their marriage lasted more than twenty years
when Harry had a heart attack and died leaving her alone with their three
children. The Depression had not passed
over Harry. His fortune had been wiped
out. Joan Marie was completely
broke.
While she had always painted
for her own pleasure, she found that she could actually sell some of her
paintings. Her seemingly innate business
acumen helped in making some real estate transactions and soon she built a
house next to the apartment building she and Harry owned along Bayshore
Boulevard in Tampa. Living there, she
managed her small property. It wasn't
much, but it gave her the financial independence that enabled her to pay their debts.
Joan Marie loved the city and being outdoors. And as the years passed, her face became a
familiar one in the downtown bustle of old Tampa. She was growing older as the city
did. She loved to tell stories--all kinds--of
growing up within the walls of a convent; of old Tampa and its characters; of
the grandfather I had never known and of my father as a child. She loved red hair, French history, Baroque
and Impressionist art, antiques and mostly, with her artist's eye, all her
"pretty children," which meant all of us, her l3 grand-children. This was my grandmother. This was where I came from. And here she lay in a hospital bed as I stood
next to her and tried with my mind's might to will her to stay here--with us.
The rattle of the hospital breakfast cart
is outside the door now. The smell of
hot biscuits drifts in through the door and it is time for me to go. Once again, as every day she has been here, I
kiss her forehead, hold her hand and say goodbye--just as though she
hears. It is the last time I will see
her. She died the following morning.
It was Mother’s Day and
momentous for me in a thousand ways. I saw my father, the bravest, toughest man
I knew, weep like a child. It was the first time. I saw him in a new way, but with the all the
tenderness a daughter carries for her father. Now I realized in earnest how he was more than a father. He was a son too.
Joan Marie was my grandmother. She had three children, thirteen
grandchildren and was well-known by the people of our city. She was an artist, a poet and a dreamer. It is only now that I realize how she did a
thing that is most difficult for any of us.
She made her own way. To do that,
she paid a price. Perhaps she was whispered
about as eccentric, "an artist's temperament," people might say. But she knew all that and still, she still
chose those things in that part of life she sought. I was only a child then. I didn't understand such a need. There was much she showed by example that
escaped my childish impatience. That
kind of individuality was too abstract a concept for my grasp then. But it was
in those days before she died that any of what she tried to say finally broke
through and I began to understand the way that she lived and all that it
allowed.
When she died, there were lots of things to
be divided. I got an antique lamp, a
book of her poems and a painting that she did, but the best of what was hers
had come to me in smaller, intimate ways throughout my life in her stories, her
humor, her love of art, her reverence for beauty and in her resourcefulness.
I find myself thinking of her often. The memory is not painful now, but as the
days pass and I reflect on our relationship it is bittersweet. I wish I could tell her that it wasn't for
nothing; that her efforts, her example, did not fail; that if I have somehow
escaped the status quo in even small ways; that if things have been different
or better, then I owe her a debt for her tender legacy. And though she could not answer in those
final days, I hope that somehow she knew...
I finally got it.
