Life Comes at You Fast

Some of my fondest childhood memories were spent with my Grandma Wanda.  She was raised in Green Springs, Missouri, a town that doesn't exist anymore.  My dad owns the land where the town once sat.  The spring that the town was named for still runs and the gravel drive still circles around a grass patch, that once held a foundation for the old hotel my grandma grew up in.  To say her Missouri roots run deep would be an understatement.  Southwest Missouri has been her entire world for her entire life.

I've always known my grandmother to be a tough old woman.  I  know she wasn't old in the years I  considered her old, but she is 13 or so years older than my other grandma, and so, she's always seemed older to me.  Her hair has always been gray, wiry and wild.  Her common sense approach to life has always seemed wise and her no nonsense manner has always felt like home.  I  played hours of school with her, I was the teacher and she was the student.  I worked a lot of hot days with her in her garden, baked so many chocolate chip cookies I lost track, wrote letters to her when I was a little girl pretending I was grown and in college, and learned how to can, sew, and kill a snake.  

There is nothing extraordinary about Grandma Wanda, she was the wife of a WWII veteran, but that was not something we talked about.  She spent many years as a farm wife, teacher, mother and grandmother.  She calls every grandchild ‘kid’ and she sees the world through a black and white lens, that is sometimes so black and white it feels harsh. Her love is a tough love, but a genuine one. You’d best know what you wanted to say when you had something to say, she wasn’t one for chit chat, but she always wanted to hear the important stuff. She was not soft in her approach, some probably would call her too direct, too harsh.  I call her a realist. She’s firm but always there. Loving but never mushy. Just right if you ask me.

She could tell stories and write poems that were quite amazing to a little girl. She never read me a bedtime story, she always made one up. She was the movie Bedtime Stories, long before it came out on the big screen.

The years have finally caught up to a lady I sometimes thought would never age past what she was in my childhood. When I visited her last summer in the assisted living she told me she was perched on the second story, hopeful a fire came quickly, and she’d not be able to escape. I tell that to people and they gasp. She chuckled and so did I, she was not kidding and she was not being morbid. She’d tell you she’s lived her life. It’s been full and she wants to go home. When we talked during the first few days of my mother’s accident that resulted in her having severe, life threatening burns, Grandma Wanda cried out and said she would’ve gladly taken her place. Her long years in the world had made her experience first hand the unfairness of this place. She was old and wanted to die and the woman she loved like a daughter was near death.

This summer I went to see her at a nursing home (pardon the use of an old term in the industry, but truth be told it feels that way sometimes -when it’s your loved one and the wind down is happening). The progression from home care, to assisted living and finally a long term care facility had been pushing the horizon for several years and it was upon her. In the spirit of full disclosure, I work in healthcare, I think most know this, but in earlier writings I found some did not. I am a licensed long term care administrator as part of the work I do, so walking into a long term care facility and engaging with residents feels like second nature to me. I had seen my grandmother months earlier, just before she went into the care center. The lady laying in a low bed (a bed that goes nearly to the floor to help prevent falls), barely able to open her eyes, was not the lady I’d seen months earlier. She certainly recognized us, her eyes flew open and the only real words we got from her were when I told her who was visiting. “Eri!” she said. She was not feeling well that day and she’s doing better now, illness wise. However, as we wrapped up the visit and I walked away I was reminded of something that I think of often. One of my favorite Red Dirt bands, Bart Crow, has a little tune about it… “Life Comes at You Fast.”

92 years fast for Grandma Wanda. Just last year she told me she felt like she was still in her 60’s and I was still 18. She was 91 when she said that…life came at her fast. Six months prior to me seeing her barely able to communicate she was doing fairly well, still navigating her assisted living apartment with an electric wheel chair, paying bills, feeding a cat and taking phone calls. As we age, fast starts to increase in pace. One day we are doing pretty well for ourselves, the next the body has given out. Life comes fast.

I could climb up on a soap box here and tell you that I’m older and wiser and that’s why we need to remember that life is short and it comes fast. I’m sure part of this has to do with the realities in my life that have made me consider just how precious our time is. But I don’t need to. You know life goes by fast; you’re living it. All I ask is that you live your best life. That you don’t live my life, your neighbors life or even the life your parents want. But that you live your best life - live for today. Do the things that need doing first and get to the things you want to do. And live. Because one day you’ll look back and realize - that it went too fast.