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?

Grandma Abandons Family

GRANDMA ABANDONS FAMILY; HOW DARE SHE HAVE A LIFE OF HER OWN?

(Pity Partytown, Vortexia) – Grandma is leaving. Slowly, but surely, my 92-year-old widowed mother-in-law is spreading her wings after living with us for the last seven months.

Still independent, she has found an apartment at a local senior facility where she will, no doubt, embark on a more exciting life. I guess watching me slouch, slack-jawed, at my computer 8-hours a day wasn’t enough entertainment for her.

Even so, how dare she leave us? Doesn’t she know she has (through no fault of her own) become my pet, my unplanned fourth child? I tiptoe through the house when she sleeps. Because she is too short to reach my cupboards, I set her breakfast out for her every night before going to bed. I drive her to her many appointments, comfort her when she is confused or distraught, and watch programs with her I would never watch myself.

I am facing an empty nest again. That’s the rub. I try telling myself it will be great to have my days back all to myself, but know it’s only half-true.

Of course, I won’t miss worrying that she’ll fall while I’m gone; nor will I miss her fretting fatalistic grousings. But the truth is, I’m going to miss grandma terribly. I’ll miss her lovely soft white hair, her frail little mannerisms, her sweet voice and kind exhortations. I’ll miss her presence here in the house.

On the bright side, I know the new life she is embarking upon will not only be fulfilling for her, but will provide me with countless stories found only in the incomparable world of senior care homes. Anyone remember Yetta on “The Nanny?”

Stay tuned for more…

UNEXPECTED ANNOUNCEMENT THROWS WRENCH IN VORTEXIA

(El Murphy’s Law, Vortexia) – News flash. My youngest daughter has just announced she is moving back home after having lived on her own for a year. Appears we’ll be moving her in as we’re moving grandma out.

Scratch the empty nest lament above.

If universe means “one-song,” vortexiverse means
“crazy melodies with a calm hook”