In the months leading up to my grandmother's death each member of the family would spend time visiting with her. Making sure she was comfortable, warm enough, had enough to eat or drink, that she didn't need anything. Enough so that we got on her nerves very quickly. One day as I sat in her hospice room asking if she wanted me to get her something she said, "I want you to get everyone to stop asking if they can get me anything. If I want something I will ask for it. I'm dying, I'm not stupid." I laughed and was given one of those looks that only my grandmother could give. "I'm serious, young lady, you all need to stop fussing over me. It's making me angry."
From that day on when I would visit with her I wouldn't ask if she was comfortable or needed anything I would just ask her what she wanted to talk about. It was the best few months I ever spent with her. Not that all of the years leading up to that time hadn't been great. My grandmother was an incredible woman. She had outlived 3 husbands and one of her children. She had worked outside the home before it was the normal thing to do. Had traveled the world and seen things that would make my father shake his head when she told us kids about them. She was independently wealthy. She was a force to be reckoned with. But getting to spend the time with her as she was dying, as she knew the end was coming closer each day was special. Because I got her to myself for the most part during those visits. And she would share with me the stories of her life.
During one of our visits she told me the story of her second husband. My father's father, Mack, was her first husband, he had died young leaving her with three kids to raise. The man I thought of as my grandfather was her third husband. She had married him when I was just a baby and had died only a few years earlier. But her second husband had been a mystery. I had always wondered about him. The pictures of my grandmother and "her Jake" as she called him were always of them doing something. Being somewhere. They seemed out of place with the pictures of her and Mack, the young married couple then the young couple with children. Holiday pictures, family settings. The pictures of her and Grandpa Ed were the same. An older couple surrounded by grandchildren and family. Sure there were travel pictures in those as well but they were usually with other little old people doing those group tours. The pictures of her and her Jake were different. There was the shot of them on a motorcycle some place in New Mexico. The shot of them on a beach in California. My grandmother must have been in her 40s at that point, my father and aunts were grown and out of the house but there were no grandchildren in these shots. Just Grandma and Jake. Always smiling. Often holding a beer or a cigarette in a long holder. She didn't look like anyone's mother in those pictures, let alone anyone's grandmother.
So when she opened up about her time with Jake I felt like I was getting a chance to see a person I had never really known. This was new territory. When her first husband died, she told me, she had been angry at the world. It was all completely unfair. They had only just started their lives together. The plan had been they would marry then travel for a few years before settling down to raise a family. But my father had decided that he wanted to make his appearance only 10 months after they had said their vows. So they shifted their timeline. They would raise their family and then travel and explore the world. They collected travel books and postcards of far off places. Making a list of every where they would go, everything they would see. And then when my father was just 7 and the two girls were 5 and 4 he had up and died on her. Massive heart attack at only 29. So at 26 years old she was left to her own devices.
She put her nose to the grindstone and went to work. Her first job was actually her late husband's position. She knew they needed someone and she needed the money so the Monday after the funeral she marched into the boss's office and told him he was an idiot if he hired anyone else but her. She knew the job from hours of talking about it with Mack and nobody would do it better than her. She was motivated and informed. She said she thought he was scared to turn a widow out on the street so she got the job, temporarily, while they decided if she was a good fit. Within two years she had the boss's job.
After a few years and a few company changes later she was making enough money that she could afford to send all 3 kids to college which had been her goal. But once her youngest left for school she said she got restless. This was the time she and Mack were going to travel. This had been the plan. But now she had a career and three kids in college and a house and a very settled life. Plans change. So she gathered up all of the travel books and took them to a used book store to give them to someone else. And while she was there she met Jake.
She told me that she hadn't dated much in the years since Mack had died. She hadn't really had time and besides that who would want to take on a widow with three children? That part of her life had gone with Mack. And if she had missed it she hadn't noticed because she had been too busy living the life she had now. But then there was Jake. As she walked in to the store with her armload of books he held the door for her. He had been on the way out, but one look at my grandmother and suddenly he decided that maybe there was something in that used book store he was interested in after all.
He asked her about all of the places she had traveled, since she was getting rid of the books she must have already gone there. She told him they were part of an old plan that no longer fit her life. He told her that the best adventures came out of broken plans and then asked her to coffee. And she said she surprised herself by agreeing to go. Coffee stretched in to dinner, then drinks, then a walk on the beach to watch the sun set, then breakfast. Their first date took almost 24 hours. "There was no sex, young lady, don't look at me like that. We just talked. And talked. And talked." From that point on they were almost inseparable.
Until the kids came home for Christmas.
They did not approve. Jake was unconventional. They worried that he was going to take advantage of their mother. Maybe he was a con-artist. She didn't blame them really, they had never known this side of her. The side that she had put away when Mack died. She hadn't had time for frivolous adventures while they were growing up, she was too busy. But now? Now she did. And she loved her Jake. But she loved her kids more. And so she told Jake that maybe things weren't going to work out between them after all. He was hurt. Wounded. He told her she needed to decide what she wanted, not live a life of what other people wanted for her. And this made my grandmother angry. How dare he try to tell her how to live. She had done very well on her own, thank you very much. So they split.
And she was miserable.
Finally she said my father came to her during his spring break and said that though he didn't think Jake was good enough for her, it wasn't his decision to make. That he and his sisters would support her the way she had always supported them. That if she liked him, then that was all that mattered. But she thought it was too late. Jake was gone. So she thought. But one day while she was sitting in her favorite coffee shop reading a book and enjoying a cup of coffee a man came up and asked her if the seat across from her was taken. It was Jake. And that was that.
They were married within a month. An impromptu visit to the Justice of the Peace on her lunch hour one day. Jake had suggested they do "something different" for lunch and this was where they ended up. The next three years were filled with the best broken plan adventures you could imagine. These were the days where you could show up at the airport and buy a ticket for the next plane leaving without having to worry about TSA or Homeland Security waiting for you when you arrived. She said my father and aunts never really understood her relationship with Jake but they understood that he made her happy and that was all that mattered. Their worries that he was a con-man were for nothing. Soon after they married Jake revealed that he was the last in line from a very wealthy old money family back East. He had a significant trust fund and wanted nothing more than to spoil my grandmother with the money. She quit her job and they traveled the world.
Then one night the front tire of his motorcycle blew out and he was killed. My grandmother said she knew instantly something was wrong. She had been home cooking dinner while he ran a quick errand. She said she felt it when the car hit him. Like the air had been knocked out of her. When the police came to the door she hadn't been surprised. She already had her coat on waiting to go with them. Her Jake was gone.
At this point she stopped talking and stared off in the distance for awhile. I asked her if she was okay and she looked at me sideways, "I thought I told you not to ask me that anymore?" I smiled and told her I thought this would be an exception.
She told me how much the next few days had gone in a blur. She was contacted by a lawyer back East who had heard about Jake's death and had some documents for her to go over. Jake had changed his will to leave a trust to each of her children and then the bulk of the estate for her. She was independently wealthy, the lawyer told her she would never want for anything again. She said she told him what she wanted was her Jake back and could his money arrange for that? Of course it couldn't. That was the day she learned that everyone was right, money did not buy happiness. She had more money than she would ever need and was the most miserable she would ever be. The universe had done it to her twice. It had taken Mack from her after only a decade together and then Jake after only three years. She was a widow again at 43 years old. And she swore she would never love anyone ever again.
Then came Ed, and my grandmother smiled. She told me now that was a man you couldn't say no to. And she got him for 30 years. But she still missed her Jake. And Mack. And the woman she was with each of them. "My men each brought out a different side of me. But they each loved all of me. And I loved them. I have been blessed. I know that."
I asked my grandmother if she would have changed anything. If she could go back knowing what she knows now would she have changed anything?
And she told me that she thought about that a lot after Jake died. What she would have changed if she could. Starting with making him replace that tire, or stop driving the motorcycle completely. On to changing days where they argued about silly things. If she had known they would only have three years together would she have even gone out with him the first time? Knowing how painful it would be to lose him so soon. And she said she decided that you can't think about the what ifs. You just have to be grateful for what is.
She told me it wouldn't be right to go back knowing how it would end. If you started making little changes to your story it wouldn't be your story anymore. Each change would start a new path. And she was very happy looking back at her life that she had walked the path she did. The pain she felt over losing her husbands let her know that they were worth having in her life in the first place.
My grandmother died a few weeks later. She asked the nurse for a blanket as she was feeling a little chill and by the time she got back to the room she was gone. The nurse said she thought my grandmother knew she was going and wanted to be alone when she did. And I thought to myself, I doubt she was alone. I imagined Mack, Jake and Ed were waiting for her, vying to be the one to take her on the next adventure. What a story that would be.....
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