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It's Grey Outside...
Sep. 30th, 2004 12:12 pm"There's not a word yet
for old friends
who've just met..."
--The Great Gonzo
I got a call from my mom this morning. One of my grandmother's oldest friends is dying.
Irma Jean and my Grandma used to be, as Forest Gump would say "Peas and Carrots." They go all the way back to being childhood friends in Jackson, Mississippi. They are children of the depression. They came to age during the second World War, and had their babies during the boom. And for grandmothers (and in Irma Jean's case, great grandmother), they're still pretty young and fresh.
Grandma and Irma Jean have this kind of Shining thing going on with them. They both found out they had diabetes at the same time. Both lost husbands around the same time, and both have similar aches and pains.
They often call each other when the other is thinking of them. Sometimes they even pick up the phone on the first ring, meaning to call one another.
Grandma hasn't talked to Irma Jean in nearly three months. The summer just passed kinda fast. So, when she got a call this morning from Jean's former daughter in law, she was a bit shocked to find out that she had gone in the hospital for surgery (I don't know what for, yet), and has been in critical care on life support for all that time.
She was shocked. Hurt, and called my mother at work almost instantaneously.
Mom called my cell about two hours ago. The caller ID showed it was from the house. She sounded in tears, and my first reaction was that something had happend with grandma.
"What's wrong?"
"Grandma just found out that Irma Jean is on life support, and they don't expect her to last much longer."
"What happend?"
"She's paralized from the neck down...and she's not doing good...we're going out to Kindred Hopsital to go see her."
"How's Grandma?"
"She's looking at the Feral Kittens"--we call them The Feral Kittens--"she's worried that one of them has broken a leg."
"Oh."
"Yeah. She's...she's not..."
"I understand."
Irma Jean is Grandma's closest friend. Almost closer than the few strands of family that she has left. She's really her only living friend. Charlie "Chaws" Smith left her back in 1992, when I was a freshman at Yale. They played "Take Five" at his funeral. Her Church friends have all left her behind, never to speak to her again, or have died. Her neighbors don't really speak with her much. The one that did was found dead on his floor, where he had literally drank himself to death. All but one of her brothers and sisters (she had something on the order of 8) have all logn since passed; the only living one is...not too well...Her neices and nephews have forsaken her.
Right now, other than my mother and I, Irma Jean is all she has. And she's losing that.
Jean has known me the whole of my life. There are pictures somewhere in my house of her holding me as a baby 30 years ago. She and my grandma. She's a sweet woman. Always has been. I last talked to her in passing...just a brief moment of levity and familiarity as I gave the phone to my grandma...
The two, Mary, my granny, and Jean talk about me, and my mom, and Jean's youngest, Annie with the kind of pride that only two old friends can share. Bookends...peas and carrots...a couple of old ladies, who love each other quite so dearly...
Grandma and Irma Jean always feel each other. Similar pains and worries. Grandma, in the last few months has been feeling more and more sickly, and honery. A couple of days ago she started feeling off the wall ill. Threw up day before yesterday. She got worried about it. Worried about cancer--the same one that killed her mother, and her two brothers, and that currently is lying in remission in her only living sibling. She worries about her friend. And for herself.
I worry for her. That she is alone. That she will give up. That she will hurt...that she will just give out...
God...My heart's breaking for these two old women whom I love.
for old friends
who've just met..."
--The Great Gonzo
I got a call from my mom this morning. One of my grandmother's oldest friends is dying.
Irma Jean and my Grandma used to be, as Forest Gump would say "Peas and Carrots." They go all the way back to being childhood friends in Jackson, Mississippi. They are children of the depression. They came to age during the second World War, and had their babies during the boom. And for grandmothers (and in Irma Jean's case, great grandmother), they're still pretty young and fresh.
Grandma and Irma Jean have this kind of Shining thing going on with them. They both found out they had diabetes at the same time. Both lost husbands around the same time, and both have similar aches and pains.
They often call each other when the other is thinking of them. Sometimes they even pick up the phone on the first ring, meaning to call one another.
Grandma hasn't talked to Irma Jean in nearly three months. The summer just passed kinda fast. So, when she got a call this morning from Jean's former daughter in law, she was a bit shocked to find out that she had gone in the hospital for surgery (I don't know what for, yet), and has been in critical care on life support for all that time.
She was shocked. Hurt, and called my mother at work almost instantaneously.
Mom called my cell about two hours ago. The caller ID showed it was from the house. She sounded in tears, and my first reaction was that something had happend with grandma.
"What's wrong?"
"Grandma just found out that Irma Jean is on life support, and they don't expect her to last much longer."
"What happend?"
"She's paralized from the neck down...and she's not doing good...we're going out to Kindred Hopsital to go see her."
"How's Grandma?"
"She's looking at the Feral Kittens"--we call them The Feral Kittens--"she's worried that one of them has broken a leg."
"Oh."
"Yeah. She's...she's not..."
"I understand."
Irma Jean is Grandma's closest friend. Almost closer than the few strands of family that she has left. She's really her only living friend. Charlie "Chaws" Smith left her back in 1992, when I was a freshman at Yale. They played "Take Five" at his funeral. Her Church friends have all left her behind, never to speak to her again, or have died. Her neighbors don't really speak with her much. The one that did was found dead on his floor, where he had literally drank himself to death. All but one of her brothers and sisters (she had something on the order of 8) have all logn since passed; the only living one is...not too well...Her neices and nephews have forsaken her.
Right now, other than my mother and I, Irma Jean is all she has. And she's losing that.
Jean has known me the whole of my life. There are pictures somewhere in my house of her holding me as a baby 30 years ago. She and my grandma. She's a sweet woman. Always has been. I last talked to her in passing...just a brief moment of levity and familiarity as I gave the phone to my grandma...
The two, Mary, my granny, and Jean talk about me, and my mom, and Jean's youngest, Annie with the kind of pride that only two old friends can share. Bookends...peas and carrots...a couple of old ladies, who love each other quite so dearly...
Grandma and Irma Jean always feel each other. Similar pains and worries. Grandma, in the last few months has been feeling more and more sickly, and honery. A couple of days ago she started feeling off the wall ill. Threw up day before yesterday. She got worried about it. Worried about cancer--the same one that killed her mother, and her two brothers, and that currently is lying in remission in her only living sibling. She worries about her friend. And for herself.
I worry for her. That she is alone. That she will give up. That she will hurt...that she will just give out...
God...My heart's breaking for these two old women whom I love.
