Nosh: Nonna

Nonna

Yesterday I was upset and posted another long non-food entry about my grandmother. I'd just like to keep it as a side note of what's been going on with me. There are some food posts coming, I promise.

...

I didn't have much of a relationship with my grandmother (la "Nonna") in the past few years. She became a miserable person who made my mother stressed out, unhappy, and imposed such a limit on what my mom could do as to greatly reduce the quality of her life. My mother could not travel ... she could not even go out for the evening without being hounded by Nonna's phone calls and wailing threats of dying. Nonna had the ultimate "cry wolf" syndrome. Still, my mother selflessly took care of her, sacrificing herself because Nonna would not let anyone else care for her. In the end, Nonna was a recluse ... she didn't enjoy this long life she was so generously given but did not really deserve. And I rarely gave in to my mother's requests that I go see her. I wanted my mother to have a life, to come visit me in Germany, to enjoy more, and therefore I resented my grandmother for taking those things away from her.

In the end, my mother died before her, no doubt pushed to the brink by the stress of caring for her. I went to see my grandmother afterwards and although I felt pity for the skinny, wailing woman laying so helplessly there, I felt the blame creeping into my vision.

Shortly after I returned to Germany, I spoke with my father, who told me that my grandmother was diagnosed with a large tumor. For the past weeks, she's been in the hospital and finally hospice. Her weight dropped (75 lbs a few days ago) and she hasn't taken any water or food. My father and my aunt (my mom's sister) have been at the hospice daily, watching her decline. I feel like I've been waiting...

Last night I didn't sleep and I woke up today, feverish and feeling ill. Just a few minutes ago I learned from my cousin that my grandmother died. I feel sadness, and I'm crying a bit, but I am mostly crying for the woman I remember as a child and not what she became. I'm crying because maybe my mother is finally at peace, can finally stop worrying about her. I'm crying because my grandmother should have gone first so that my mom could have lived more. And I feel for my aunt, who lost her only sister, and her mother, in two months time.....and for my dad, who is finally free from my grandmother but who also has to go through another funeral, another burial, and who will go back to an empty house when my aunt goes back to Italy.

My mom would tell me: try to remember a few of the good things. Today for a little while, I will Mom.