My Grandparents’ Garden
Growing up, my favorite place in the entire world was my grandparents’ house in Illinois. Every summer I drove there from Pennsylvania with one of my parents and was left to spend a couple of weeks visiting. While I was there, I always got lost in odd craft projects, stacks of books, and the luxury of cable viewing. My favorite time was after dinner when we would sit in the driveway and I would eat tomatoes from my grandfather’s notoriously high-yielding garden until I was sick. Even after he died, my grandmother insisted on planting tomatoes every year and every year I gorged myself on them.
When he was alive, my grandfather went to bed at 10:15 p.m., on the dot, every night. He was an early riser, but my grandmother relished being able to stay up late and sleep in after years of working. She would cross-stitch (or, when her eyesight started to go, solve crossword puzzles) and watch sitcoms or game shows. We would talk. I told her about all of the parts of my life she missed in between phone calls and visits.
We talked about my friends books I was reading and things I’d learned. She told me about the pet goat she had as a girl and how my father probably got his alcoholism from her father. When I went on feminist rants about how being a girl wasn’t fair, she agreed with me. She listened and she never judged, which is why I often found myself telling her things I was too afraid to tell anyone else.
Last summer, the summer before she died, my grandmother lost 50 pounds in three months. At 5’ 7”, she weighed only 93 pounds and had congestive heart failure. The morning I learned about the condition and her limited life expectancy, my mom and I packed a bag and went on an emergency road trip to see her. In the hospital, I saw her cry for the first time in my life. She wished to die, crying and praying aloud for God to take her. She missed my grandfather and her dead son and she was tired. She didn’t think she would ever go home again.
When my mom and I left the hospital in the evening, my grandmother gave me her keys and insisted we stay the night. Walking into the house, the negligence was evident. There were dirty dishes in the sink, some covered in mold so impenetrable they had to be thrown away. The fridge was empty besides a small selection of yogurt, condiments, and really old deli cheese slices. The laundry wasn’t done. How many days had it been since her son or multiple grandchildren had stopped by to see her? Had they at least talked to her? Why hadn’t I?
That night, I wandered the house for the last time. I collected a few mementos; a necklace, a quilt, and her collection of matryoshkas which she’d been trying to give me for years. The next day, my mother and I visited one last time before the drive home. I hugged her harder than I probably should have, her being so frail and all, and I said goodbye. She died a month later.
Her death seemed so unnecessary to me. She was so sad and lonely, and maybe it was easier to give up. It made me sad to think about and I struggled with my feelings of guilt. Why didn’t I call her more? Why didn’t I make the time to see her more as an adult? Why hadn’t I lived nearer and been there to notice she was wasting away? I felt like I deserved my grief and I deserved to feel bad because she was gone and I hadn’t done anything to stop it.
The day she died I started wearing her necklace. It’s a tiny cameo in a gold filigree setting that I don’t ever remember her wearing. It still stirs memories of her every single day. I think about her when I sleep with the quilt, too. Sometimes, I can almost imagine I’m 12 years old, wearing it over my shoulders like a cape because the air conditioning was cranked. When I see the tiny matryoshka I hung from my rear-view mirror, I think about all of the times we carefully opened the nesting dolls on the dining room table until we got to their middle. The tiniest of the dolls were the size of her fingernails.
At the beginning of this summer, it hit me that I wouldn’t be visiting Illinois. Faced with the choice to break down into my grief or do something about it, I decided I would plant my own garden. I measured the plots in the yard and fretted for weeks that the boards wouldn’t be cut in time for me to plant anything. In late May they were finished and I spent a weekend pounding stakes, drilling wood, hauling dirt, and planting. I’d grown small gardens before, but they were nothing like this. I couldn’t believe how quickly the tomato plants shot up and started flowering. It was only a few weeks before everything was growing wild and the enormous fruits started turning orange. When I took the first bite of the first ripe tomato, I thought about my grandmother. The guilt began to ease and I felt comfort.
