I called my 93 year old grandmother on my walk this afternoon. She isn’t doing well. What was initially thought to be a cough from a virus or cold is now being associated with congenital heart failure. “Cardiac cough” they call it. She has always been kind of a firecracker: teaching me things I wasn’t yet supposed to know at an early age, sneaking me into rated R movies, making me white russians on our sleepovers, and even persuading employees of the local liquor store to deliver her Canadian Club during the covid lockdown.
She didn’t sound like herself today.
I’m used to complaints about the assisted living’s cafeteria food, or gossip about the residents. Today, it was all about the bald eagle livestream they put on the closed circuit TVs. She got fascinated by them in 2020 when she wasn’t allowed to leave her room- I even sent some books via amazon so she could read more about them. Of course her vision isn’t good enough to read much these days.
“They’re cute to watch. Ope, there goes the mama… but she’ll be back before long! You should turn it on- channel 66!”
I don’t have the eagles on my TV, but I found them on youtube for a while tonight. Admittedly, they didn’t keep my attention for long. I wonder why she finds them so riveting.
“I have to turn them off before I go to sleep, because when they squeal, it sounds like a human screaming! One night I left it on and it scared the nurses. They ran in here like bats outta hell and I said ‘It’s not me, it’s not me, it’s the eagles!’”
It might be that I associate eagles with the song “On Eagle’s Wings”- a catholic hymn I helped to sing at my other grandmother’s funeral almost 10 years ago. Part of me wonders if it’s a sign.
For now, I’ll keep calling on my afternoon walks, even if all she wants to talk about is the eagles on TV.
“Oh! There she goes again- she’s flying off but she’ll be back!”