A Beautiful Mind

On June 11, 2008, my grandmother went to the hospital for a routine, preventative procedure, during which she sustained significant, unexpected trauma. That singular event changed not only her entire state of existence, but it altered our family dynamic and, from all accounts, reframed and redefined both ‘the personal’ and ‘the professional’ for the doctor who performed the procedure.

It was a rough summer: just weeks after my grandmother’s trauma, my husband’s grandmother began a rapid decline, and we lost her. The day of her funeral, in Detroit, my grandmother was taken in for emergency surgery, in West Virginia, a surgery that was necessary for her survival but that she wasn’t expected to survive.

But she did survive. Strong, tough Appalachian woman, I said. But when we visited her at the hospital---in her minimally conscious state, it took me a moment to recognize that wonderful woman who has given me so much of herself . . . most symbolically through her recipes.

I treasure my “Grandma Weezy’s” recipes, and I share her love of the kitchen. On a visit to her home in Pennsylvania a few years ago, she sat me down at her kitchen table, and we went through her book--a binder filled with her favorite recipes. Of course, not one recipe in that book is followed to the letter when Grandma makes it, so she walked me through each recipe adding her own “now I don’t do thats” and “but here’s how I do its” and “it works best if you do it this ways.” I left her house that day with my own collection of annotated recipes, and they have been my source of comfort since her trauma.

She has improved and declined by turns, suffering several subsequent ‘events’ secondary to that original trauma. For just a short time around Christmas last year, she was finally--after some six months in the ICU--able to go home, but that lasted only days before she suffered seizures and a stroke and was back in the ICU. She hasn’t been able to go home since, splitting her time between a nursing and rehabilitation center, the ER, and the hospital. Sixteen months.

The last time we visited her, I took her some of my freshly canned, homemade jams. I treasure the smile she shot me as she turned the jar over in her unsteady hand.

Though she is often coherent and alert, the trauma has left its imprint on her, and she now experiences frequent confabulation. While I was talking with my mom last night, she explained that the subject of nearly all these confused memories and perceptions involves the kitchen. Grandma just baked bread (she gestures to the side table). Grandma finished canning tomatoes, or hot peppers and sauerkraut, or green beans. “Go get yourself some. They’re your favorite, and they’ll go well with that fresh bread.” And on.

All day today, I’ve been going over the conversation I had with my mom last night. It is tragic to see my grandmother--strong, independent, blithesome--so compromised. But her mind--her beautiful, beautiful mind-- seems to give her solace, seems to compensate for her present condition by placing her in her vibrant kitchen and freeing her do what her body will no longer allow.