A Square Hole

Every Wednesday I help in Dawson's class at school, with a project called Poetry Academy. I love Dawson, and love to see him during the day, but that is where the joy stops. Poetry Academy is a whole 'nother post.

Today I was reading poetry with one of Dawson's classmates when she whipped out a piece of paper and asked me if I wanted to see the poem that her grandmother had written to her. I, of course, did, and she sat there with an almost horrified look on her face while I bawled through the whole thing. Had she not snatched it from my limp, grieving hands, and hightailed it back to the classroom, I woulda made a copy. It was beautiful.

The poem was about all the things the girl would remember about her grandmother. The way it was written you could feel the grandmother's angst as she said that her granddaughter would probably not remember, when she was grown up, how much she liked it when her grandmother fed her peas, or spent hours outside building snowmen, or taking walks. She would only remember how tired, and wrinkly and old she was. The last stanza was very poignant when she writes that as a grown up, the granddaughter won't realize why she loves peas, or gets a warm feeling when it snows, or feels comforted by a walk; but the grandmother will have left her influence whether she remembers it or not. If I can get a copy of it next week, I will, and add it to this post.

Anyway, there is no shortage of grandmother-ly influence on my life. If I t'wer ever to forget, I also have my Gram Beth's name, as does Em. In addition to her name, I also chose nursing as a career, have a terrible time masking my emotions, (specifically disgust), like to write, love to cook, and have little, to no sympathy for non-life threatening illness or injury, even if it is my own child.....

A trait that may have skipped right over my genes, but not my young impressionable mind, was my Gram's gift of generosity. She was always doing something for someone else, and I spent a lot of time delivering her special cinnamon rolls, and watching countless people come in and out of her back room at home, where she practiced a lot of neighborhood medicine, giving shots, consultations, and free mental therapy.

A couple of weeks ago, I came on to a shift at the hospital, and being a little tardy, I inherited the "unsavory" patient load. This included an older, but not elderly man who lived in a storage unit and would be needing a bath before his discharge. Baths are not something we typically do in the emergency room, unless you've got bugs, or we are trying to decon chemicals, but this man smelled so horrible, that I insisted and helped him get clean. It was not glamorous, and the humidity alone nearly robbed me of my breakfast. He happily chatted away whilst we cleaned, but not really being a natural conversationalist, especially when  scrubbing strangers' crevices, I could not wait for the ordeal to be over with.

After the shower, I ransacked the 'Homeless Closet' for some warm clothes. I was lucky, and found some snow pants, a heavy coat and some nice shirts for him to take "home", along with a boxed lunch; and when I presented them to him, he was appreciative and once again, extremely chatty. I tried to redirect him towards his medical care but he insisted on repeating all of the stories I had heard while showering. There were a couple about lawsuits he was about to win (on a side note: you never want to find yourself without a witness, scrubbing down a naked stranger, on wet slippery floors, in the hospital, especially if said stranger has multiple medical lawsuits pending...) The conversation was irritating at best, and I am ashamed to say, I was quick to do my biz and get out.

A few years ago, we were required to have a project at work. I decided to start a 'Homeless Closet', which is basically a collection of donations for our indigent population. Gram went nuts when I told her about it, and donated some of my Gramp's coats and things, and then got busy making these wild colored yarn snow hats. She made a ton of hats, all in bright, crazy colors, that I recognized when a recipient would come back to the ED, and even once on the side of the road in downtown Salt Lake.

As I printed off the last of the Storage Unit Man's discharge instructions, I rounded the corner and there he sat all padded up for the trek home. The thing that stopped me in my tracks was the hideously bright orange, and green and black yarn hat sitting on his head. A hat my Gram had obviously made.  Hats that died away, long even before Gram did, and it was such a shock to see one.  I immediately felt the shame wash over me, as I thought about Gram, and how she always had time for me, and my trivial needs. That even when she was younger and working at the clinic, I would ride my bike by to get a sucker or a hug, and she would make time for me. That, if she were here today, she would be sitting at the side of the bed, intently listening, and actually helping heal something in this man, instead of shoving food and clothes at him, trying to cover a square hole with triangle patch.

My opportunity  passed that day, to make things right, and I have reflected on it many times since. Although I don't love peas, and I hate winter, there are many things that make me think of the love I was given, and the traits that I would like to emulate of hers.