“Do you think there is a heaven?” my 99-year-old grandma, who was a devout Catholic, asked me one of the last times I saw her alive. It was June of 2019, and my mom and I had driven south to Dyersburg, TN, to visit her in the long-term care facility she had only recently been admitted to. This was a woman who had driven until she was 88 and lived independently since my grandfather died 10 years earlier at 91.
Grandma was part of the Greatest Generation, prayed the rosary, and watched the Catholic channel daily on her 20-inch television. Every time we spoke on the phone, she would ask, “Did you go to church today?” She lived her faith by example.
She loved to play competitive card games and have an occasional sip of blackberry brandy as a nightcap. The fire and spunk I saw in her eyes when she sheepishly challenged me about an afterlife was a new side of her I began to see years earlier as we both grew older. I was in awe that she was both willing and able to question her faith in her tenth decade of life.
I made time to get to know my grandmother as an adult
“There’s no shame in being afraid,” she once said to me. It was spring 2002, and her words caught me off guard. Relief was the initial feeling. I thought, “Oh, now you tell me.” I had spent my life running from my anxious nature, and her words were freeing. She was my maternal grandmother and would be called GGMa by my nieces and nephew, yet to be born.
The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, she had grown up on a farm in central Illinois, and her life had been shaped by hardship, resilience, and a little mystery. She had always been a stoic taskmaster when she came to stay with my younger sister, brother, and me — and harder to get close to when we were kids. With these words, she conveyed a soothing wisdom I had never heard from her before.
Despite GGMa’s disciplined nature, she also had a wry sense of humor. Both she and my grandfather — who was quicker with a gentle smile and a joke— instilled a sense of joy and laughter in their three girls, which they passed on to my cousins, siblings, and me. Because I had missed the later years of my paternal grandmother’s life due to college and travel, I was making an effort to spend time with my maternal grandparents. That they would live into their nineties was a gift.
I’m thankful for my last visits with my grandmother
Back in Dyersburg, TN, I replied, “I’d like to think there is a heaven, Grandma.” I appreciated and even admired her blind faith and the respect she had for her small-town priest, who visited her regularly in long-term care. My reply was honest and my own, someone deeply spiritual but skeptical about how the Catholic rulebook she followed played out.
Wanting to get GGMa out of bed during our visit, I instigated an outing into the summer sunshine for a change of scenery. I had fun wheeling her through the rehab center while she directed me toward a door to escape the stale air, despite the staff’s dedication to cleanliness. In the last picture I took of her, she wears my Maui Jim sunglasses, the midday sun on her face, and looks as much like herself as ever.
When I arrived to visit her for the last time, she was sitting up on her knees in bed like a teenager, singing a hymn, smiling, and waving in rhythm toward the ceiling. She looked 30 years younger and was in a trance-like state, clearly communicating with someone. It was beautiful to watch, and I believe she received her answer about heaven.
Thinking about our last days together, I wonder if Grandma asked me about heaven less to question her own faith and instead, to encourage me to explore my own. If heaven truly does exist, she is definitely in it. What is certain is that I benefited deeply from the time we spent together as adults, and I’m grateful I made time to get to know her as the woman she was: faithful, fun, stubborn, anxious, and strong.
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