I’m riding around in a golf cart at my grandma’s house in Sweet Home, Oregon. She lives on a farm, with her house just steps from the Santiam River. She is a very energetic 83 year old and uses the golf cart to zip around her property. It gets filled with shovels, gardening gloves, and flowers to be planted. She sees some weeds and she tells me to stop. We pull over and get to work.
“Breea always remember, we need to get the weeds so that they don’t stop the flowers from growing. We want the flowers to see the sun and we won’t let these weeds stop them. I can’t wait to see these flowers bloom and look so beautiful,” she says to me.
My grandma’s house was always a sanctuary for me growing up. As a child I lived in California and made trips up to my grandparents place in Oregon. When my family relocated to Oregon City, my brother and I would fight during the hour and a half car drives from our house to Sweet Home. As a college student I’d blast music to make the drive from Eugene to her house a little faster, while taking shortcuts through the back country roads.
I loved being at my grandmother’s house; her house made me feel free. I could smell the clean air and be out in a wide open space. It was always just what I needed. It helped me forget about all my stresses and reminded me what was most important in life: love and family.
My grandma was born in Nebraska and lived through the depression. She traveled the world as a flight attendant and was a Rosie The Riveter during World War II. After the war, she lived in Germany where she met and married my grandpa. They moved back to the states where she taught school and raised her family. After she retired she taught the special-ed class at her church. And this was how her life was. Go, go, go, go. She lived every day to the fullest.
My grandmother was my inspiration and my hero. She paid for my college, always stressing the importance of education. She believed in my dreams to have a career in journalism. She wrote the best home-made birthday cards ever. When I’d leave her house to go back to school, she would fill my Volkswagen bug up with toilet paper, laundry detergent, cheerios, and socks. She made sure I was always taken care of. This year was the first time in my entire life that I had to buy my own laundry soap.
Growing up I didn’t always appreciate her eccentric ways. I would sometimes dread the odd jobs she would make me do. Many times I didn’t want to be out in her garden with the spiders or where I would get my new Nikes dirty. But as I grew older, I cherished every moment with her. I called her every week and we wrote letters back and fourth, telling each other about our days.
Christmas of 2010, I noticed my grandma was not running around on her feet like usual. Instead, she made herself comfortable on a big chair in my aunt’s living room. My heart sank a little. I knew something wasn’t right. So instead of chasing after my little cousins or helping in the kitchen, I sat on that big chair too.
The following months were filled with hospital visits and scary phone calls. My grandma had fainted. We found out her blood pressure was too low. Then she hurt her lower back and a couple weeks later an x-ray showed a broken bone. Then a hairline fracture. Finally, a doctor told us cancer. Blood cancer.
I was shocked. How could my energetic grandmother have cancer? I thought she was invincible. I mean, she taught me how to do a cartwheel when she was over 60 years old. No way. Not possible. But it was.
Through it all, my grandma stayed positive. Every day she picked out the one good thing that happened to her and she would tell me all about it during our telephone calls. Sometimes it was the good weather. Sometimes it was about a visitor or a story about her dog, Scout.
This past Fall, I had just watched the University of Oregon football team play when my mom called. She told me to hurry over to my grandma’s, that they had called hospice, and she was getting weak fast. I could hear the pain in my mom’s voice.
As soon as I walked in the door of my grandma’s house, it felt different. She was laying in a hospital bed in the living room. Family was all around her. She was incoherent and looked only like a frame of the person she once was. My mom was crying and I tried so hard to hold back the tears. My cousin leaned in and told me that my grandmother had stopped talking. My mom told me to go ahead, sit next to her, and tell her I was there.
I sat there. I took her hand.
“Grandma, It’s Breea.” I tried to say this loud and clear but my voice shook. Then the most amazing thing happened. She turned her head towards me, her blank stare trying to meet mine, and she said “I love you.”
Those were the only words she spoke that day. The last words she would ever say to me.
Two days later at 4 am, my mom and I were woken up by my grandma’s nurse. “It’s time,” she said. “It will be soon.”
My entire life my grandma had taught me about strength. I knew in this moment she was passing the strength on to me. I needed to be there for her in her last moments on earth, and for my own mother too. My mom tried to speak but she couldn’t get out a word. She looked at me as if to say, “Breea you need to do this.”
I sat down next to her bed. I told her it was my mom and me beside her. That her dog was laying beneath her bed. I told her that she was the heart of our family and that we loved her so much. I said it was okay to walk through the golden gates of heaven, and to go ahead and be with Jesus now. Then I said her favorite prayer to her in German, the one she used to say to me as a child before I fell asleep. I held her as she took her last breath.
My grandma died on September 12th, 2011. I wrote her obituary, which was the first thing I had ever written that appeared in a newspaper. I spoke at her funeral and ever since that day I’ve had a broken heart.
But now I feel strong. I remember every lesson she ever taught me, how much she loved others and her passion. As a teacher she was teaching me. Her lessons were the tools she used to nourish me, to help me grow through the stages of my life. Her last lesson was to teach me strength. She passed on her greatest virtue to me. I felt it go through my body and into my soul that early Fall morning. I am a strong woman like her. I can do anything.
I will never let the weeds in life overtake me. I will pull them out and bloom. I will continue to grow and live a beautiful life for her. I was my grandma’s flower.