Last Christmas

Last Christmas

Grandmother spent her last Christmas reclining on the couch, wrapped in a flowered robe that I remember as yellow with rose-colored posies.  It covered her colostomy bag and long limbs withering from cancer, but her seven grandchildren sitting on the floor were too young to know that Santa Claus was not real or grandmothers died.  Our eyes, reflecting the colored tree lights, sparkled in anticipation of opening the presents stacked beneath the tree. While our parents and grandparents spoke with each other in hushed tones, we gleefully squealed, tearing ribbon and wrapping from trucks and blocks and dolls.  Our Christmas memories of welcoming Baby Jesus and holiday gifts were untouched that year by the adult-only drama unfolding as we gathered.  Grandmother’s children, our mommies and daddies, our aunts and uncles, were saying goodbye.

Earlier that October, Mother, my sister Susan and I had moved temporarily into upstairs bedrooms at the Chaplain’s parsonage in Portland where my grandparents lived.  It was across the street from Emanuel Hospital and next door to the nursing school my mother had attended.  My brother Gary was living there already. While no one is alive who can tell me the full story, I believe Gary’s mental retardation and hyperactivity were too much for my mother to handle with three preschool children. The grandmother who I would learn to know and love through family stories was a dynamic, “can-do” woman.  I am sure she believed she could and would make a difference in my brother’s life and insisted Gary come live with her. She channeled Gary’s energy to jumping mattresses in the basement, painting easels, and a small bike with training wheels. Mike, the boxer dog, kept an eye on him, although I’ve heard how Gary climbed out the window and ran to the cars parked along street on the corner lot.  Imagine the drivers’ annoyance to return from visiting patients in the hospital and find their windshield wipers pulled out by their roots.

While my father continued to work in Seattle, our family settled into life with Grandmother and Grandfather.   Grandfather shaved every morning in the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs, Grandmother ate breakfast of Ruskets and toast with us in the large airy kitchen, and Susan napped while I learned about colors and numbers and being the only non-black child in a kindergarten class.  Some mornings Mother asked me to “babysit” Grandmother while she ran errands.  I would entertain Grandmother by belting out songs or cutting out my Oklahoma paper dolls for us to play together.  During our stay, Grandmother was hospitalized for what I presume was surgery or treatment.  Little children were not permitted to visit, but my mother had done her nurse’s training at Emanuel Hospital and was privy to secret routes up back stairs.  Lying in her hospital bed, Grandmother was not as robust as I knew her to be, but she smiled and held my hand as we visited.

These memory snippets of a child less than six years old, fleshed out by family anecdotes, became richer when woven with my own life experiences.  When I was in college, I learned that Grandmother graduated with a double major in math and art.  My sister was artistically talented and I became a mathematician.  When I fingered wool plaids in the fabric store and pored over patterns, I felt connected to my grandmother who was known personally by all her neighborhood fabric purveyors as an excellent seamstress with impeccable taste.   I never achieved such skills, but I like to think of her as I sew.  I once overheard my dad share with his sister Helen how much I reminded him of their mother.  It was a compliment that I cherished.

I wish Grandmother was coming to spend Christmas with me this year. I would match her stride for stride as we walked the beach. We could bake Swedish cookies and sew gifts together.  I’d like to make coffee for her just the way she likes it, and wrap up all her shared stories and dreams to store in special places in my heart.  Grandmother and I might even talk about our cancer journeys, because knowing how to die is part of knowing how to live.  Spending the holidays with Grandmother would be so very special.

Now I often wonder what gifts Grandma received her last Christmas so many years ago.  I like to think that surrounded by the children she had taught and inspired, loved and corrected, reminded her of her life’s work and that the grandchildren at her feet promised her the legacy of her future.  Merry Christmas, Grandmother.

Victoria Swanbeck Randolph

April, 1895 – February, 1958