The following lines relate to a subject that a lot of people might have experienced before or are currently living with their grand-parents or if you're older, your own parents. What I'm talking about is elders moving out of their houses to go live in a smaller appartment, usually with other semi-autonomous seniors or with the ones who need proper care because they cannot take care of themselves anymore because of certain health conditions.
In the case of my own grandma, she has osteoarthritis in her hands and legs and has a hard time walking to she is sitting in a wheelchair since the last since months. This forbids her to lead her normal everyday life as she used to. She is extremely saddened by this and we all are. My grandmother has lived alone since the early '70s because my grandfather died of a work accident which led her to raise her four children alone.
Ever since then, she has never remarried nor moved out so she's been living in the same house in Granby, QC for the last 50 years! This is a huge move for her; imagine how painful it would be to leave all of these souvenirs -whether good or bad- behind and look forward to a new life that is actually no matter how sad it is, the last step of your life on planet earth.
My grandma seems to be still somewhat cheerful and to accept her this eventuality way better that what we had all expected her to. She will probably move out into some nice place in downtown Granby. During the last two months, my mom and her siblings have made countless stops at my grandma's place to start packing her stuff and to seperate what she's going to keep and what she should get rid of or simply don't use anymore. All my cousins have made incredibly long lists of precious things they'd like Grandma to lend them which include pricy objects such as cutlery for big occasions, painting frames and fancy decorations. The only thing that I have requested was her earth globe as it is truly gorgeous and has almost never been used (she still keeps it inside the protecting plastic bag she bought it in).
As I am a fan of maps and geography, my grandma and my whole family knew that I would ask for the globe and as they couldn't care less about it, they agreed to let me have it. The other last item that I got from that family auction was, believe it or not, the Kama Sutra book!!!!!! Yeah, this is a funny one: back when I was 13 years old, I was digging through piles of books my grandma had received from her subscription to Readers' Digest and guess what, I found the goddamn Kama Sutra book!!! After I had made that obnoxious discovery, I couldn't stop teasing my grandma with it and telling her how surprised I was to have found that at her place. She would respond by groaning back at me and tell me she had no idea what the heck that book was lol. The book has remained in her living room's library for almost ten years until she gently told my mom to give this to me and that she didn't want anyone else to inherit this book but me lol!!! I got it when I came back from my oh-so-huge-Bigass Trip as I like to call it.
Today, I was mowing the lawn at my house and was thinking about it: could there be anything else pricier in emotions and attachment than these two items? When you think about it, an earth globe or the Kama Sutra book might not be the most expensive objects in the world but they truthfully mean something to me as there's a whole story and passion behind them which also leads me to think my grandma genuinely loves me and knows who I am! I hope you share the same kind of relationship with your grandparents, it truly is endearing to know that this generation who grew up in a whole different picture frame can still relate to us as being their family and can still love us for who we are, no matter how much we differ from them and the education they've gotten. My grandma is an open-minded, ahead-of-her-time, outgoing, dynamic and strong 78 year-old woman with confidence, a big heart and a life journey to pass on. Grandma, I might not make you read this as 1) you don't understand nor read English, 2) I don't want you to know I have such a skanky blog and 3) you might be more offended than flattered by the fact that I wrote an article about you moving out but I still hope that deep inside, you know how much I care about you.
Love you grandma!
