Matriarch Tales #11: Grace Elizabeth Part 5 – by Saga

These tales are the stories I remember about my maternal ancestors: my great-grandmother, grandmother, aunts and mother. The stories may or may not be accurate; family stories seldom are. But they have influenced me, often without my knowing.  I set them down here to remember and to honor these unsung women. To refer to blogs about other generations of the matriarchs, please go to https://consortiumofseven.blogspot.com/p/c7-posts.html and scroll down to Wednesday’s list.

Goofing off at an LGBT chorus fundraiser

Grace was/is my mother. I hear her voice in my memory often these days, offering advice and encouragement. She couldn’t always do that – offer encouragement, I mean. It must have been hard for her to mother me when she was never mothered well herself.  If, as she suspected, she was the produce of a marital rape, it’s understandable that her mother resented Grace’s very existence. The effects of domestic violence ripple down generations, stones in a dark pond.  At the end of her life, I came to understand that my mother had never been loved into this world as a child and I was able to help her feel loved on the way out. Just in the nick of time. It’s hard to forgive myself for not understanding sooner.

When we left off last week, Grace had been widowed for the second time. Once again, a man who loved her and treated her with respect and affection had died. Like her mother and sister before her, she had to remake her life again.  Her sister Alice was a constant comfort and this time it was her women friends who helped her find her way.She met J. and then J’s friends when she attended a Bible study class. J was an expert biblical scholar and teacher and had a group of friends who had all been associated in one way or another with a local seminary.  They were all smart, intellectual engaged, intent on making their lives expressions of their spiritual beliefs. They were generous with my mother in many ways, though she found it hard to understand their love for her. 

The group often traveled together to share a cabin in Michigan or a place in the south. When they invited Grace along after they’d known her for a couple of years, she was convinced that they wanted her only for her cooking. When they picked her up for the trip to Michigan, she found a large package in the backseat next to her.  When the women insisted it was for her, she was surprised, but that was just the beginning. In the box were all sorts of art supplies: paper, markers, pencils, watercolor paints. “We want you to use the art supplies on this trip,” they told her, “you have to spend most of your time just drawing and painting.”  She wept, she told me later, because of their kindness.

Her wish to learn watercolor painting was one she’d had for a while but was never confident enough to try. Now she started attending classes and experimenting. Something in those women’s belief in her, I believe, gave her permission to follow that wish to fruition. She apologized for every painting she showed me, as she did for every dish she put on the table, every bit of needlepoint or knitting, every garment she made.  Grace produced a lot of beautiful work, tasty dishes, meticulous needlework, but she apologized for it all.  When dementia took her memory in her 90s, I framed some of her watercolor paintings and hung them in her room. She often admired them, and when I asked what she thought of them she examined them closely and said, “That’s a pretty good artist!”  And then when I told her it was her work, she was first surprised, then proud. “I did that?  That’s good work.” 

When they learned that she had always wanted to pilot a plane and go up in a hot air balloon, her friends gave her a trip to the Albuquerque balloon festival for her 75^th birthday.  She talked for year about the magic of that flight, the silence aloft, and how she could hear the dogs barking below. Her son John told her that he wouldn’t allow her to go. “How does he think he can stop me?” she said. 

Grace was generous with her time. She tutored children at a nearby elementary school and was tickled by their progress in reading. She was particularly fond of one little girl and found ways to provide her with clothing or books on the sly.  

Some days she just forced herself to keep going, as she did after a breast cancer diagnosis, lumpectomy, and weeks of radiation treatments. My formerly look-on-the-dark-side mother focused instead on the bright side and talked often about how kind the radiologist and her staff were. I believe she was learning that the world could be a welcoming place and I think her women friends. Somehow, those friendships carried a meaning that her marriages had not – perhaps because she felt the women could choose to abandon her. They never did.

She planted several flower gardens and called pulling weeds her “dirt therapy.”

Her son John and his wife were dedicated volunteers at a local living history museum. John made their costumes with great attention to detail, taught teenagers how to build fires and cook – just as Grace had done, creating feasts over an open fire.  Grace decided to volunteer at the museum as well and took on a role as a substitute actor. She made her own dress, petticoats, and shawl, all by hand, at age 85, which a friend pointed out was an astounding accomplishment.

Her costume sewn by hand. We giggled through the fittings.

When I was seriously ill, Grace rescued my younger son who needed a place to live and some time to get his bearings after graduating from college. He went to stay with her late one night and they came to an agreement. Grace told him he could stay for two weeks and that expanded and expanded and expanded again. I believe he thought he was there to help her, and she thought he was there so she could help him. They were both right.  He confided in her and she encouraged him in ways she had never been able to encourage her children. It was one of the joys of being a grandmother, though she certainly didn’t spoil him. There were rules and he had to stick to them, which was just what he needed at the time. Her women friends loved him and taught him social skills so that he blossomed in new ways.

Grace worried about me and when I was hospitalized to try a new heart drug, she came every day to sit by my bed, bringing good food and clean clothes. Though I was often unable to focus mentally, one moment is clear in my memory.  I was barely employable, but I did have a job to which I gave everything I had in me, working long hours in difficult situations. My hospital stay, which was supposed to last over only one workday, expanded to almost three weeks because the drug nearly killed me. My mother became incensed because my employer had not sent flowers. She called the executive director and left an angry – and insulting - voice mail. Then she called to tell me what she’d done. I was stunned and figured that was the end of my employment. Then I realized that my mother had stood up for me for the first time. I was in my late fifties and I was grateful.

Grace and I became closer over the next years, partly out of mutual need. Every girl wants her mother, no matter how old either of them become. And every aging mother needs an ally, a cheerleader, an attentive child. So we did that for one another. I moved to her city to be nearby and to care for her and her sister.  But we also shared the things we enjoyed: music, theatre, books, natural beauty, cooking, needlework.  All the loves handed down from Nancy Alice and Bertha Rachel and Alice.

When Alice died at age 103, Grace was again stunned by grief. She was so accustomed to taking Alice  clean laundry several times a week that about two weeks after her death, Grace drove across the city to see her and didn’t realize where she was until she had parked her car. She called me and said, “I think your mother is losing her mind.”  I said, “I think my mother misses her sister.” And we cried together on the phone.

Her words were prophetic. Her dementia began, I now realize, with auditory hallucinations. She reported with increasing frequency that someone was coming to her door in the middle of the night, ringing the doorbell, and running away. She called the police often and finally a deep snow revealed no footprints. She was hearing things that weren’t there. I learned it was best not to call or visit after about five o’clock because she was usually confused and her speech was slurred. I figured it was the alcohol, which may have been true. But it was probably combined with the sundowning part of dementia.

I will skip the details of her struggle with dementia, except to say that specialized memory care became necessary. Her caregivers talked often about how sweet she was. She appreciated every gentle nurse, talked about how the nursing assistants were made to work too hard for too little pay, and thanked them profusely. She died a sweet little old lady with a great sense of mischief. As she struggled to breathe, she could only let go when my wife assured her that my sons and I would be well cared for.  “Just climb into the basket and sail away in that beautiful hot air balloon,” my wife said. Grace died peacefully a few hours later.

Her last words to me were, “Give me a hug.”  And I did.

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