LIFE DISHES IT OUT,
AND WE EAT IT UP
Journal of Healing – Jan. 8, 2003
By Mary Koch
News that my husband will become a great-grandfather next summer taught me something
about how much he has achieved in the nine years since his stroke.
It wasn't the news so much as his reaction to it that was the mark of achievement.
Some of my own initial reactions I kept to myself. As a step-grandmother, I don't
always feel I have the right to be as outspokenly parental as a biological grandmother
might. I didn't earn the grandmother role by raising kids but more or less acquired it by
default.
Once, when this grandchild who is about to become a mother was a little tot visiting
us, husband John had no compunction about giving her a grandfatherly smack on the tush
when she was naughty at bedtime.
The next morning, granddaughter complained to her mother: "Grandpa spanked
me." Her mother replied with serene assurance, "You probably deserved it."
The mother knew that from experience — a lifelong knowledge of what it took to get
a spanking from her dad. If I, on the other hand, had applied the spanking, she'd have no
way of knowing if the cause were just. We had no shared history in that area.
* * *
BEST NOT to create doubt. Best to forego spankings, even if deserved. Best not
to voice certain qualms when the same grandchild, who suddenly is a mature young woman,
announces "we're pregnant."
The qualms weren't worthy of expression anyway.
I might have said, "You're so young," but she's the same age my mother was
when she had her first child.
I might have said, "You haven't finished college," but she's still committed
to her education.
So I voiced appropriate enthusiasm. Later, when we were alone, I asked the
great-grandfather-to-be for his reaction.
Eyes up. John's positive signal to fit all occasions. It can mean anything from
"Yes, OK, fine" to "glad to see you."
Even though John can't speak, he can spell out words. He had nothing more to say.
* * *
FROM WHENCE came this Zen-like attitude toward life's events?
John used to write newspaper editorials, for crying out loud! Editorial writers have a
strong opinion about everything. They'll tell you in black and white what's good and
what's bad. They're the ones who, as the old saw goes, step onto the field after the
battle's over and shoot the survivors.
Recently, when I was seething about something that hadn't gone well (that is, hadn't
gone the way I wanted it to), I asked for John's assessment. Eyes up.
"Fine!" I groaned. "You think everything's fine!"
And I realized I was right. He does think everything's fine.
More than once, because his life has been sustained by "artificial" means,
doctors have asked John if he wanted to opt out, so to speak. He chose to live.
Perhaps when life dishes out all the worst possibilities — total paralysis,
inability to speak or eat — and you still choose life, you have learned to accept
life on its own terms. You don't have to decide if anything's good or bad, if you're for
or against. It just is.
If you are willing to accept whatever life dishes out, then you get to watch a
beautiful young granddaughter grow up to be a mother in her own right. And that's exactly
what John says it is: Fine, simply fine.