Endurance – Laurel Felt, PhD

Ruth Feldman | c. 1942

How much longer can she hold out?

And how much longer can we?

Mom reports that Gramma seems surprised each time she opens her eyes. Still here? her gaze seems to say.

We stay all day, from just before 9 am to just after 9 pm. Then we go to sleep, expecting a middle-of-the-night phone call to awaken us. We rise at 8 am, somewhat shocked to have slumbered uninterrupted.

We sit with her when she’s asleep, and try to entertain her when she’s awake. Yesterday, my cousins and I played an improv game on the “stage” at the foot of her bed. Mom did some pliés and relevés at my coaxing. Gramma chimed in occasionally when I read aloud from Wikipedia, variously relating the filmography of Gene Kelly and researchers’ latest theories about brain hemispheres. Gramma acknowledged, when I explained Laughter for a Change’s latest program with the NOW Academy, that bullying is a big issue these days.

Because the regular pain meds were no longer delivering Gramma from pain, at lunchtime Mom administered a small dose of morphine. The hospice lady said that this means that Gramma’s condition is “changing.” I asked if there’s a normative timeframe associated with this change, as in, Does morphine now mean expiry at x-time? No, she told me. Oh, I said. Okay.

I had slept in this morning, and then gone with my dad to Michael’s to buy 12 more 8×10 frames and one more 5×7. Curating the photographic exhibit of Gramma’s life has been my feverish occupation for the past three days. The completion of my masterpiece just means that I’m out of a job. A government employee probably could have told me that efficiency only jeopardizes the doer once the doing’s been done. Now what? This morning’s extra hours at home didn’t serve me, and neither does my current idleness. It leaves too much opportunity for anxiety to creep in.

My mom is sitting beside her mother, knitting a scarf for no one in particular, and listening to Cary Grant’s inimitable blusterings. My dad is sitting across from me at the dining table, engrossed in his Nook — specifically, The Book Thief. Caleb is panting under the table. My sister is picking up the maki rolls. Leanne, Joe, Aunt Sue, Uncle Dick, Mayta and Joan just left to celebrate Mayta’s 88th birthday.

“You’re the grandma now,” my mom had told Mayta as they were heading out for dinner. “We need a gramma for the wedding.” That would be my wedding, and thank goodness I’m getting married. Such happy news is a cherished counterweight to our current grief.

“I feel like your family,” sniffed Mayta.

“You are!” we cried.

Dabbing her eyes, “I’d like to be here…”

“You’re fine,” Mayta’s daughter Sue assured her.

“It’s in a couple of months,” I scoffed, trying to make little of the time from now to then. I can’t imagine anything happening to Mayta. But then again, three weeks ago, anything happening to Gramma seemed unthinkable. Don’t think.

Later, as we toasted to Happy Hour and Shabbos over tumblers of three-buck Chuck — deliberate doses of self-medication, my mom made a confession. “I’m afraid to try to wake her up,” she admitted, referring to her snoring mother in the next room. “What if she’s in her coma, and not just asleep?”

“You’ll find out as soon as a reasonable amount of time for a nap passes,” replied my dad, ever the logician. We raised our eyebrows and nodded.

So we continue to hold out, to hold on, until at last, too soon, and finally, Gramma lets go.