275. Life with Granny
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| Our Grandparents with their grandchildren |
There was only me at my Granny’s bed-side when she breathed her last breath. She had held on to my hand for quite a while and just moments before she died she urged me not to leave her on her own.
That, I thought was a strange request on one’s death bed and although I did not attach any importance to that request at the time, it has however, never left the back of my mind. I was in my twenties at the time and I thought, granny, for whom God meant everything to her, could not possibly be afraid of dying, but she was, she did not want to go on that journey alone. That was something I could not understand.
And since to-day we celebrate Joachim and Anne’s feast day, Jesus’ maternal grandparents, I thought it appropriate to bring up my own maternal grandparents too.
Maria, as such was my granny’s name, was a holy woman. It was tramping through the fields to early morning Mass and rosary in the evening, outside on the doorsteps in summer and in the stables in winter.
My grandfather, Francesco, was a rough kind of man who liked to pinch young ladies bottoms, I noticed. I did in effect ask my grandma once, why on earth she married granddad, they just were so ill-matched. “He was so good looking,” she said with a languish look in her eyes, “And he was an Alpine.”
Well, yes, I guess in a uniform, with that alpine feather in his cap, granddad looked terrific. But what made me marvel was that such a pious, holy woman as my grandma was could possibly have such heartfelt sensual desires and not even try to hide such emotions from her, at the time, so young granddaughter.
What I remember most about my granddad was that as a child I would often corner him and beg him to tell me a story, and although I had heard it so many times before, I insisted he told me the story of Cinderella... just one more time, I would plead. Every time he told me a story but in particular that story, he made me dream a thousand dreams... of blue, star studded ball gowns, magic wands that made all possible, of golden palaces and masses of roses at my feet... and when the story ended, unfailingly I asked the same question over and over again...
And then... what happened next?
Obviously I would not take “And they lived happily ever after.” As the final word on the matter.
Granddad died one day after lunch. He just laid his head down on the table and died and never came back to see me again after that.
But grandma came to see me again. It was sometime in the spring of 1999. I saw her in one of the woods nearby, the light was filtering through the trees. She wasn’t young, but she was youthful- she was radiant with happiness, just like the sun peeping through the trees. Surprised to see her there, I asked why she had come. With a serenity and peace I had never seen before she said she had come to fetch my father...
Yes, Granny came to fetch my dad in the Autumn of that year, but she wanted to tell me about it first.
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