My Easter Message

My grandparents--my mom's parents--were old. Very old. And I'm not just saying that because everyone over the age of 50 looks old when you're a kid. They were in their mid 40's when they had my mom and by the time I cam around, they were 74 and 79. All my memories of them have them in their 80's which is ancient in little kid time. I just assumed everyone spent Sundays at the nursing home with Grandpa.

My grandpa died when I was 9. He was 88. My grandma was a spitfire and hung in there for another 12 years past him, dying five years ago at the ripe age of 96.

For the last seven years of her life, she lived in a hospital that dealt solely with Alheizmers. She had the disease fairly bad and though it was devastating to watch it suck the life force out of someone who had been so vibrant, she did not deteriorate to the point that some of the people in the hospital did.

My brothers and I would entertain ourselves when we went to visit Grandma. For some reason she always thought it was Christmas, EXCEPT for the one day that it was Christmas. Then we couldn't get her to open her presents because she was going to wait until Christmas Day to do so. We would tell her stories about what we were doing in our lives and towards the end, we'd let her call us by the wrong name and just go along with the stories. For instance, 5 foot 8 inch, redhead 20-something year old me was my 4 foot 10 inch Brazillian 70-something year old aunt. I would just go along with it because in a few minutes I'd be someone new. Sometimes we'd see who could invent the most outrageous thing. My oldest brother--a person who can charm the pants off of anyone--won when he introduced me as Snoop Dog to a "visiting" patient. Without batting an eyelash, the lady turned to me and said "How do you do, Snoop Dog?" Didn't even phase her.

The best part about visiting Grandma was her collection of items from other patients' rooms. Since everyone was free to roam, often times, we'd find someone else's pictures and stuffed animals sitting on her dresser when we came by to visit. For whatever reason, she thought that my twin brother was someone else's son, who had Down Syndrome. The picture was old, as though it had been taken a long time ago. Each time we stopped in, we'd ask Grandma who that was a picture of and she'd look at us like we were crazy. "Scott of course." She'd reply. Before leaving, my mom would sneak it off her dresser and return the picture to it's rightful owner. A few times, Grandma would tell us about how someone kept stealing her picture of Scott and so she took to hiding it in her underwear drawer.

One Easter, we came in and there was a present waiting just for me. She had "purchased" a stuffed lamb for me, her only granddaughter. When you pressed the belly of the lamb, it would croak "Happy Easter" though it talked with a lisp, so it sounded more like "Happy Ether". I was 16 or 17 at the time, a little old for such gifts, but I took it with a smile. We never could find it's owner and so it came home with us.

A few nights later, I sat down to dinner of lambchops and the refrain "Happy Ether" "Happy Ether" "Happy Ether" kept running through my head and ever since, I have not been able to eat lamb.

As I was "consulting with the Easter Bunny" last night at Wal-mart because I had left things to the last minute, I was reminded of this story. 10 years later I still remember how happy my Grandma was when she handed over her pilfered lispy lamb.

May we all find such simple pleasures and joys in life.