Grandma Update: She's Wearing Lipstick

Grandma Update: She’s Wearing Lipstick

(Golden Years, Vortexia) -- Grandma has made an extraordinary transformation. She’s wearing lipstick. At 92 years of age, it’s more than remarkable. It’s a sign.

With her beautiful Italian coloring, Tuscan blue eyes and white hair, grandma used to sport a splash of lipstick and on special occasions some subtle eye-shadow. She always dressed impeccably. But, when she turned 90 she stopped wearing makeup.

You see, my mother-in-law is an amazing woman, but her up-beat personality and zest for life weren’t enough to sustain her through trials the last two years have wrought. Among other things, she: 1) survived a ruptured gall bladder, 2) lost her husband, first to dementia and then to kidney failure, and 3) suffered a stroke which left her without any peripheral vision.

Not long ago my observant daughter asked her grandmother why she no longer wore make up.

“I’m too old,” explained Grandma with a shrug. “I guess I just don’t care anymore.”

Fellow Vortexians may recall that about a month ago Grandma moved into her own apartment in a nearby independent living facility. We all cried saying good-night to her the first night she stayed there. In all her life, she had never lived alone. Not that living in the senior facility is living alone, but….

It didn’t take long for her to make the adjustment and every time we see her or call her she looks and sounds…happy. Really happy. She actually has a bounce to her step again. Residents at the facility gravitate to her and she has her old charm back.

Yesterday when I visited her, she opened the door and I took a double take. She was wearing pink lipstick and a dusting of blue eyeshadow.

I won’t say what conclusion I, and my daughters, jumped to. After all, it’s just lipstick, right?