There are lots of small things that I will always remember about Grandma Grady. I remember her blue Dodge Dart and how she used to drive it very slowly with one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator. I remember her grandfather clock and how comforting the sounds that it made were to me. I remember arriving to see her on the Peter Pan bus and how she waved to me with a smile on her face. I remember how she went to church every day and how I looked forward to going with her. But most of all I remember her waving goodbye to us from her kitchen window as we left her house after spending another memorable holiday with her. The image of her smiling and waving goodbye in the soft light at that window will forever be etched in my mind along with emotions of happiness and sadness. So now with sorrow I say goodbye to you Grandma. I love you.

Geoffrey S. Grady
September 7, 1996

Estelle Elizabeth Grady, 83, of Springfield, Massachusetts, died August 22 in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She had been employed for over 30 years at New England Telephone and Telegraph and was a union steward as well as an active member of St. Patrick's Church and the Springfield Pioneer Club. She is survived by 6 children - William Grady of Middletown, CT, Donald Grady of Foxboro, MA, Kathleen Grady of East Longmeadow, MA, Dorothy Grady of Coventry, CT, John Grady of Springfield, MA, and Stelly Brunelle of Brownville, NY - as well as 19 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.

When mom called three weeks ago to tell me grandma was dying, I sadly felt a bit of relief. I thought not so much of my grandma - for she had died to me many years before - but of my mom, who had visited her at least once a week for over eight years. This would be the end to what had become a nightmare. Legal battles over nursing home payments had devolved into medical battles over the care my grandmother deserved. Each month seemed a new fight over a matter stupider and yet more draining than the previous. As sad as I knew my mother was to have her mother die, I felt the death might ultimately be a blessing. Perhaps it was, but not for the reasons I had expected.

When I went to visit the nursing home, it was only my second visit in eight years. I had occasionally seen grandma at home, as mom would sometimes take her for a weekend to visit, but was still unprepared for what I saw. Grandma lay there motionless and dumb, her mouth agape, unable to move, speak, seemingly even to think. Alzheimer's and many bedridden years had worn this large, healthy woman to a 78-pound collection of bones and skin, the kind of "memory picture" that people afraid of death most fear. I sat on the side as my mother and some Kelly cousins visited, petting grandma's hair and cooing about how beautiful her complexion was. I sat silently as the conversation buzzed, replaying memories in my mind, and waited for my grandma to die.

I could not even hope for her to live, for what promise was there in that? More years of slow, lonely death in the nursing home? All I could hope was that she would die.

But as I sat there, waiting, thinking about her, grandma did not die. No indeed, grandma came alive to me. I saw her eyes light up at the sight of my mother's face closely pressed against hers and it set me aback. I saw tears well up in grandma's eyes, and I realized she was trying to communicate her enduring pain. And when I went to swab grandma's mouth with a moistening salve, I saw her frail arms raise suddenly in defense and her face contort with displeasure. The solution had stung her lips; I had caused grandma discomfort and pain. Was it more hurt than I had inflicted by not visiting and allowing her to die there alone? Perhaps not, but I now saw that my grandmother was not dead. She was there, alive, and mostly suffering. And she had been so for many years.

This story is about Alzheimer's, suffering, my grandmother, and my mother. It also reflects our reactions to death, the alienation of dying, and the pain we can cause by our errors. Some of the errors are mine and some belong to others. But all begin in alienation and the distance we try to make for ourselves from death and the dying.

My mom's exasperation of the nursing home policies had once been abstract to me, if still real. But now I could truly see how those policies were hurting my grandmother, quite visibly causing her pain.

I saw how their failure to counteract antibiotics caused a urinary infection which my mother told them would happen and insisted had occurred, but which they failed to diagnose for almost three weeks. My mother saw it in grandma's tears, and could do little but plead.

I saw how the home had delayed calling hospice for months. And when mom finally called herself, hospice denied the application because, inconceivably, they said grandma was "already in the dying stage" and so their time frame had passed. Little help would come.

Unable even to stop them from moving a new resident into the room as grandma was about to die, my mother begged at least to help make grandma's last days more bearable. She asked that grandma no longer have to endure painful bed-turns every four hours, medicine given via needles rather than orally, and the interminable enemas which the nursing home recommended though grandma had not eaten in many days. My mother's request that grandma receive morphine was approved, with the alarming dosage of 15 milligrams as opposed to the 2 milligrams recommended by hospice. My mother again objected - grandma needed to be comforted, not killed - and the dosage was reduced. Several days later, the nursing home withdrew the prescription altogether. Somehow, after lying in a bed for six years, without food or water for almost two weeks, grandma was no longer in pain?

My grandmother remained alive for several more days, and in that time my mother took care of her, and sat by her. She went to visit every day, and no other family member stayed by grandma except when my mother was there. Somehow she was the glue, and within all the disagreements over the wake, the funeral, and the burial location, she concentrated on being there for grandma, just as she had for many years previous.

On my mother's refrigerator there is a newspaper clipping. It reads, "Live so that when your children think of honesty, faith, and integrity, they will think of you." In this regard, she clearly has succeeded.

It was hard to deny intravenous feeding and then watch grandma so slowly wither away. It was harder still to avoid the time commitments piling up ahead. For when grandma ultimately did die, late Thursday night August 22nd, it was too late for a wake and funeral that weekend, and likewise impossible for a funeral any time in the subsequent two weeks. The conflicts were due partly to Labor Day and the start of a new school year, but mostly to the more looming and extended commitment of a political convention. More than a significant event, this convention held particular meaning, particular sadness, and particular joy for our family.

In 1968, my grandmother had watched the Democratic convention in Chicago on her television, viewing the antiwar demonstrators being beaten and the convention hall in chaos. She said to my mom, visiting from Oklahoma at the time, "This is awful. Isn't this just awful?" My uncle and aunt were there in Chicago among the demonstrators - grandma took care of their two young children. Yet it wasn't fear or anger that grandma was thinking about, it was hope. She looked at the scene and she added, "But someday, Dorothy, someday we'll be there - and we'll be on the inside."

Part of the reason grandma's funeral was delayed was because both my mom and Aunt Kathy were delegates to the '96 national convention, again in Chicago. And if grandma had remained alive, she would have been stranded there in that nursing home, dying and suffering. But she died on Thursday, when my mom was there with her. Mom stroked grandma's hair and said, "There there, ma, that's okay... now you can come with us."

My mom cried during some of those speeches in Chicago, and she didn't even sit in her delegate seat partly for fear that the television cameras would catch her. But she and my aunt were on the inside. And grandma was there with them.