My Grandma, The Catfish

The first thing I noticed is the hospital room was quiet. No beeps for heart rate or oxygen levels. No periodic blood pressure squeeze. Just one bag of morphine in a lockbox, a bag of saline, and in the brief moments when no one spoke, the sound of their drips.

Grandma broke her hip last December just before my family was going to visit for Christmas. She was 94 when it happened, or so we think. Grandma always said her sister had forged documents to make her appear two years older so she could marry grandpa at 16. One could do such things in Hollister, California, then a small farming town where Grandma’s sister had married grandpa’s brother. If the forging story were true, she had my dad at 19. A smart thing to do if you want to become a great grandma.

Grandma was a total badass, still living alone when her hip broke. Grandpa passed away in 2011, but not before he sold their farm to buy his wife of more than 60 years a nice house closer to town and medical help, if needed.

Grandma spent most of her time alone in that house, amusing herself on social media, where she posted under several aliases sporting grainy profile photos of attractive 40-year-old blondes. (In her day she, herself, was a redhead, oft-mistaken for Lucille Ball.)

Grandma pretended to be a nurse. She befriended men who spoke with her on the phone. At least one man’s wife called my uncle, who was paying grandma’s phone bill, after discovering grandma had been talking to her husband. If only that couple knew they were fighting over the world’s most mischievous nonagenarian.

Grandma would blast Fox News all day just to have the voices in her house. And the drama, I think. But if you talked to her about anything they said, she either didn’t know they’d said it, or would consider why it was ridiculous.

She grew weed in the back yard just to put the buds in a gallon ziplock bag that she liked to place on the counter when people—adult grandkids, especially—came to visit. She relished their reaction. What’s the point of being in your ‘90s if you don’t get to have any fun?

When my girls visited, she’d pull them around in a little wooden box with wheels or find every plastic bin in the house and fill them with water. To anyone else, it would appear her home had nothing for kids to do. But grandma made it their favorite place. (Great grandma, to my daughters.) She always wore a hat and bright red lipstick. Sometimes we’d have to FaceTime her twice: As the first call rang, she’d bedazzle herself. Then she’d answer the second one. 

When grandma’s eyesight declined, her internet habit got tougher to maintain. Also, she fell.

She hated rehab. She wanted to go back home. She’d scream at people trying to wean her off the painkillers a doctor who’d been banned from the hospital, apparently, had over-prescribed. She finally agreed to getting a day aide, a comfort she’d refused because this frugal woman wanted to leave something for her children. I believe she wound up liking the company. My parents and my dad’s three siblings, none of whom live near Hollister, also took turns being with her.

I visited at the end of April with my husband when we were close for the Big Sur Marathon. We talked for 3 hours, with Grandma cracking most of the jokes, using a walker to get around, the first time I’d ever seen her bound to one. She asked me how long I thought she’d live. I told her until at least 100. She said she’d be happy if she woke up tomorrow.

Her body was going, but Grandma’s brain never faltered, though there are some in the family would call her crazy. Lovingly, maybe, in the way we tend to think creative people are crazy because they see things in ways others do not. 

I once visited to find the base of a floor lamp in a beautiful flower pot. And why not, really. What is a floor lamp if not a giant incandescent orchid? She cut big square holes in all the bedroom doors to let more light into an interior hallway, privacy be darned. Every visit, the furniture and decor would be somewhat rearranged.

She had a beautiful garden she refused to stop watering during a drought. She’d raised my dad on a prune and walnut and apricot orchard and couldn’t see how her small yard was using much water. A local news station used footage of her watering trees and plants in a package on the drought, painting her the fool.

She sent cards to every kid and grandkid and great-grandkid on their birthdays. The first thing my 7-year-old said when I took off from Los Angeles last Monday night, hoping to talk to grandma one last time, was that great-grandma wouldn’t send her a birthday card this year. Her sister got one in July for her 6th birthday, along with a beloved rambling voice-to-text. My 7-year-old started to cry.

Grandma had a bowel obstruction and was too fragile for surgery. The hospital decided to make her comfortable. This is a version of what it means to die “of old age.” To have a pained body, to treat it with opioids that cause clogged bowels. To not be able to unclog them anymore.

I raced up the 5 on Labor Day evening, alternately crying and singing to Matchbox20 because my car has a CD player and the only CDs I have are from high school. Early on, my car decided to hemorrhage all of its oil for the first time ever, so I dumped more in, and kept driving. Even if she couldn’t talk to me by the time I made it, I wanted her to know I was there. I know people can feel these things, sense each other’s presence. Even with eyes closed.

My mom took me straight to the hospital when I got there at 10:30 p.m. It was amusing to figure out what we were supposed to call grandma when asking for her, given her penchant for aliases. She was not listed under the name most of her mail came to.

She was asleep when I arrived and noticed the room was quiet. I’ve never been in a quiet hospital room. And warm, no need for a jacket. My aunt and uncle asked a nurse to adjust grandma’s position ahead of schedule, because doing so tended to wake her up. Saying “HI GRANDMA IT’S ERIN!” really loud in her face didn’t do it. Her morphine drip was at a 3. Out of what, I don’t know.

She did wake up. She looked straight into my eyes. I talked with her (at her?) for an hour, telling her about her great-granddaughters. Eliciting some smiles and a “cute.” It took a lot for her to say a single word, but I could tell she could hear me, understand me. She probably wanted to tell me to shut up, but couldn’t, so she and my mom and aunt and uncle and one cousin had to listen to unedited recordings of my kids’ original songs from my voice memos, including the smash ski-trip hit “Baby Mole.”

Grandma perked up the most, though, when I told her my parents had a framed watercolor painting of hers on the wall at their home, a picture she’d made of my brother driving grandpa’s tractor like we did when we were little and they still had the farm. I think she always saw herself as an artist. I later heard tales of how she transformed dance halls, and school halls, and Halloween basements into magical spaces as a young mother.

After I gabbed, we let her rest. I slept for four hours, and came back the next day with nearly all of my cousins. We hung out in her room and talked and shared stories and took turns comforting her when she woke up. She liked to have her head and the side of her neck stroked. As we talked, I’d glance over to watch her breathe, witnessing the shutdown of her autonomic nervous system. Slow, jerky, spaced out breaths as she slept. 

When she got uncomfortable, the nurses said they’d up the morphine and give her Ativan. Now I’m no doctor, but in my life, I have taken exactly one Xanax, which is a fun way to discover Erewhon exists, but it also knocked me out hard for 5 hours in the middle of the day. I knew I’d never speak to her again. She’d be gone. There was talk about bringing her home, a bed was even dropped off at her house. I watched her breathe as I gave her a kiss and knew that would be the last time I saw her. She died in the hospital a few hours later with two of her sons by her side.

That night, my cousins, parents, aunt, and uncles made a circle of chairs in her yard and told stories for hours. We ate white cake with white frosting from Safeway, Tillamook old fashioned vanilla ice cream, Cheetos, and orange Fanta. Grandma’s favorite foods. (Yes, I am rethinking my entire diet right now to get me to 95.) We laughed a lot. She made a truly remarkable family. Three sons and a daughter, 9 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren, and not a single person sucks. They are all wonderful people, with good senses of humor, who care about each other and are genuinely fun to be around. Says me, the one who never shuts up. (My cousin said before I left that I’m like my own one-woman podcast…Wait, if no one else sucks, am I the one who sucks?!)

Grandma’s funeral is on 9/11. I sincerely believe this day was open because nobody else wanted to have their loved one’s funeral on 9/11. The other option was Friday 9/13, but this was out of the question because I’m told grandma was superstitious.

This is only 8 days after she died, which seems rushed, the cousins agreed. Absolutely not enough time to invite her internet boyfriends and catch their reaction to having been part of the greatest catfishing scandal of all time. Hardly enough time for the NYT to put together the obituary she deserves. Her life may not have made headlines, but it was remarkable. She was remarkable. Her one request was that she be buried with pink around her face. Pastel pink, like the suit she wore to marry grandpa.

So I’m off to Hollister with my family today, to say goodbye, ceremoniously, a week after I said goodbye in person, squeezing her hand and kissing her forehead. To watch a box of her bones reunite with grandpa’s in a mausoleum. I am convinced no one would’ve considered this turnaround too quick if they’d peeked at the mortuary packages left out on her kitchen counter.

“It costs $80 a day to freeze a body,” I said, the morning after she died.

Then my much quieter cousin B replied: “With a two-day minimum.”

I think grandma would’ve laughed.