June 30, 2024

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

My grandparents house with its bright red carpets and fuzzy brown couch looked the same as it did years ago when I last walked into it.

“Grandma, I finally made it back to visit, I’m sorry it took me so long,” I wanted to say as I pushed open the door.

I wanted her to be there like she always was, building a puzzle on the bright red tablecloth in the dining room, or taking out a batch of freshly baked muffins from the oven.

But instead, there was an empty blue fruit bowl on the counter in the kitchen that was never empty when we came to visit, a painful reminder that time has left the house the same, but changed everything else.

It was always brimming with nectarines, plums and peaches, which my grandmother cut up for breakfasts when we visited in the summers. It reminded me of innocent days spent playing baseball at the field near my grandparents’ house, and Yahtzee around the dining table, back when I had no worry of losing my grandma, because it felt like she would live forever.

Now the innocence was gone, and I was painfully aware of the fleetingness of life as I stood in my grandparents’ house, while my grandma was in the hospital she would never walk out of.

Death is as dark and heavy as the memories I have with her are light and airy, weighing me down deep in my chest.

Maybe one day they’ll equal each other out, but right now, the grief consumes me.

My grandma was a special lady, with brown eyes and a perfectly lipsticked smile that turned up at the corners when she saw her grandkids or bird in the backyard or a particularly good play on the baseball field.

On summer visits we’d walk to that field, and I felt like a MLB player in front of 40,000 fans, because I had one dedicated fan sitting on the hard wooden backless bench in my grandma. I knew she was watching every single thing on the field, and I knew she would be impressed. She’d sit on the bench so focused on the moment you’d think she has nowhere else she’d rather be. And I don’t think she did.

My grandma loved to spoil her grandkids. She only had six in this world, and one of them was lucky enough to be me.

An otherwise routine day in childhood turned into a fashion show in Paris when my grandparents came to visit us. They’d cart us off in their white Buick to the stores for a shopping spree.

They must’ve sat there outside the changing rooms for hours while my brother, sister and I tried on clothes. But each time we opened the door, I can still hear my grandma saying “woo hoo” and clapping her hands in excitement over a new shirt or pants we’d tried on as if it was the first one.

“That has to be a keep,” she’d say, and we’d put it in the keep pile in our dressing room.

On those days, the pre-teen angst melted away. I felt like a runway model because of my grandma’s kindness and unwavering enthusiasm each time I displayed a new outfit. I opened the door of the change room with insecurities, and I closed it with confidence, seeing a little bit more of the beauty with each outfit that my grandma saw in me.

My grandma was our cheerleader throughout life, and she was also a talented chef who worked for smiles and “thank yous” and plates that were licked so clean we almost saved her dishes to wash, but not quite. She’d whip up vanilla squares, and we’d sit at their dining room table in Ottawa when we went to visit them with the red table cloth. I’d slowly eat forkful after forkful, trying to make the sweet taste of vanilla pudding, icing, and whipped cream last just a few seconds longer.

I can still smell the green Palmolive dish soap in their kitchen after the last bite was scraped off the plate, hear the dirty dishes clinking together and the conversation between my parents and my grandpa and grandma - but from a distance. My siblings and I were off, bellies full of my grandmother’s cooking, running up their red carpeted stairs, to the bedroom they’d sacrificed so we could sleep there while we were visiting. We were heading for a pile of Archie comics my grandma had dug out of the closet a few hours ago upon our arrival, where we’d lose ourselves in the love affair between Jughead and his hamburgers, and the love triangle between Betty, Archie, and Veronica. It was the innocence of youth, where the moments with my grandparents were taken for granted, and the moments with the comics, weren’t. It was always disappointing to be dragged away from the pages.

There were other treasures she found besides the comics, laid out on the dresser for us. A pile of stuffed animals that used to be my dad’s and my two uncles’. Little gestures to make us feel at home.

My grandma was always there and thinking that there would come a day when she wouldn’t be, when I would pay any amount of money to wake up and run down the stairs and see her sitting in her favourite chair, didn’t even seem like a possibility.

She was a constant. There when we visited in the evenings and the mornings, and the in-betweens.

It wasn’t as easy as it used to be for them, but they made the trip from their home in Ottawa to Toronto to be there to watch me walk across the stage at my university graduation.

I know it caused her some pain, I remember, it was hard for her to walk, but she sacrificed her comfort to be there to support me.

When she smiled and she cheered, it made you feel so special, so important. My grandma had a beautiful smile, and a special one she saved for my grandpa.

Some loves fade, but their love never did. My dad described it from a visit to their nursing home. Although I never got to visit when they were both there, I heard through him.

I heard my grandma’s face became the sun when she saw my grandpa, spun around in her wheelchair, she was waiting for him. Slowly pushing his walker down the hall, but she was patient. Each step was pain for him, but he kept going. She couldn’t articulate anymore, but her love for him was in her smile, his love for her in each step towards her. She waved to him as he got closer, and together, they outshined the fluorescent in the nursing home hallway. And how naive to think there was only one sun on earth, when in this nursing home there were two.

I thought I wanted a love like my grandparents had, a romantic love, but their love was more than enough. How lucky for me that their love has been passed down, their love has created me, their love, it will always be a part of me.

I remember my grandma telling me she wanted to live a full life over an incredibly long life on a visit one year when I was younger.

But my grandma lived both a full and a long life. It was full in many ways because she appreciated small things, like a shopping spree with her grandchildren, a bird that was visiting their backyard, a beautiful sunny day and a particularly tasty bite of food.

“Absolutely scrumptious,” she’d say, living mindfully by being who she was, a woman who saw the beauty of life in the moment.

I know she’d be happy, the same way she appreciated the small things, that she’s still here with us in the small things. I know she’s smiling at us now, at her great grandson, as I hold his hand extra tightly before we cross the street or put a hat on his head before going outside to play. Her love for us was in the care she showed us.

I'm sorry, Grandma, your advice might have fallen short on younger me, but it’s here in the way I now care for my son.

There will always be regrets, I wish I’d visited more, I wish I’d listened more, I wish I’d appreciated her more.

But in the end, it's black and white like life and death. There’s no in between. I know she loves me, just as I love her, and that love will continue on through the gestures and the love I show my son.

My grandma told me she’d be up there with the clouds, looking down on all of us one day. Although today is a perfect sunny day, with no clouds in the sky, did you send it from Heaven grandma?

I know she is up there because she said she would be, and my grandma was reliable. She was always there, cheering me on throughout monumental occasions in my life. Like when I opened the door of a dressing room in a new outfit in a body that was changing and I felt uncertain of, like when I walked across the stage to graduate university, and she was up in the stands, cheering me on despite the physical pain it caused her to be there.

Just because I can’t hear you clapping grandma, I know you are.

And when I clap for my son, and maybe he grows up and has kids and claps for them, I will always think of you and the love you showed us.

I didn’t say it enough, but thank you, grandma, for your love. Thank you for sharing it with us, it lives on through us, it will always be a part of us. You gave us so many material things throughout our lives, but the greatest gift you gave us was always your love.