Elle Potter

My Gramma Kicks (Cancer’s) Ass

I was sick with a high fever in a beautiful hotel room in Dublin at the turn of the new year, 2011.  My mom emailed me to tell me that my gramma was in the hospital very sick, and they weren’t sure yet what was wrong.  I wasn’t worried, though.

See, I happen to be one of the lucky 27-year-olds in the world who has all of her grandparents still alive and kicking it.  And of those four, Billie Jean, aka Gramma J, is the youngest and spunkiest. She’s the one who drinks the teas her Chinese medicine doctor prescribes, practices Reiki and does Qi Gong.  I’ve always just assumed she was going to live to be 120 and we’d be sitting around eating her infamous sugar cookies until 2050.

After numerous tests and continued time in the hospital, doctors discovered Gramma J had lymphoma.  As soon as I got back to Colorado, my cousin Lo and I drove to Kansas City through the middle of the night (or rather she did most of the driving) to surprise Gramma J with a visit at the hospital.

I wish you could have seen the look on her face when Lo and I came into her hospital room.  There was a blank stare for a full second before her eyes flickered with recognition and then immediately filled up with tears.  We dropped off flowers and candy bars (dark chocolate Milky Way, her favorite), but more importantly we hung out and shot the shit.  Lo and I each made little critters out of blown-up sterile gloves while Gramma J made a couple lewd (and hilarious) sexual references and lamented about how she was so sick of Lucy (the monitoring system she was hooked up to).

It’s scary seeing someone you love sitting in a hospital bed, knowing they’ve been there for a few weeks already.  It’s scary when you don’t know what is happening or what will happen, even if your mind hasn’t even completely acknowledged yet what exactly is happening.

That acknowledgement hit me the next month, when I was in Italy.  I sat in beautiful giant churches and lit candles for Gramma J and another friend’s gravely sick father.  One afternoon I accidentally stumbled into a really fantastic yarn boutique and decided to pick out some yarn for my mom to crochet a hat for Gramma J.  Chemo was the next step in treatment for the lymphoma, and I thought it would be nice if she had a hat made from some Italian yarn.

I searched through all of the colors and started conversing in my own head about which to choose.  Purple is a very royal and magical color, I thought, and since my gramma is the most magical person I know, that will be perfect.  Then I started testing textures of the yarns.  I need something that will be soft on Gramma’s head, I contemplated.  Need something that won’t be scratchy on Gramma’s lil’ bald head…

And that was it.  That was the moment that everything hit me.  The seriousness of the lymphoma, my gramma’s mortality, how far away I was, how I didn’t know what to do to help, that there was nothing I could do to help… except for pick the right kind of yarn for my mom to make her a hat that wouldn’t be itchy on her little bald head.  Of all the words that had been used to talk about Gramma J for the last month – “cancer,” “lymphoma,” “hospital,” “chemotherapy” – the words “little bald head” was the one that finally elicited an emotional response for me.

At this point, not only was I hiding in what may or may not have been the back storage room of the yarn shop, I was also worried that because I didn’t speak Italian, the beautiful little old ladies in the shop wouldn’t be able to understand why I was desperately trying not to snot on the merino, or why I was walking through the shop holding a skein of purple yarn like it was the most devastatingly precious treasure on the whole planet.  And because I had finally started feeling the whole gamut of emotions I had been waiting to feel for so long, I could not stop my eyes from dispensing the borderline-projectile tears of someone in hysterics.

I purchased my skein, bought a huge bowl of gelato and a bottle of wine and went immediately back to the hotel room, where I spent the rest of that rainy day indulging.  I had chosen that particular bottle of wine because one of the words in its name was “Bene,” which I knew meant “good.”  But by the time I was halfway through that beautiful bottle of red, I recognized the first word – “Tutto.”

Tutto Bene.

It’s all good.

From that moment on, each new glass I poured and each new flavor gelato I began enjoying had the prelude of a toast out my window overlooking the main street in Bologna.  “TUTTO BENE!” I would shout from three stories up, lift my glass, send some love to Gramma J, and then sit back and enjoy.

By the time my friend got back to the hotel from work, I don’t think he knew the extent of my emotional day, other than I was sitting, giggling on the bed with an empty wine bottle, a purple-stained mouth, and a tiny little neon orange spoon.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving this last November.  Gramma J has been kicking ass with her blood tests and scans, and her hair has grown back (quite beautifully, I must add).  We stood in a circle holding hands and remembered those who are no longer with us, each quietly whispering from within our hellos and I love yous to a hushed list of family and friends who have continued on.  I stood next to my gramma, my arm wrapped around her shoulder as hers was around my waist, and I held her shoulder tight into my ribs.  Then we thought of all we had to be thankful for, and I held Gramma J in a little tighter.

“I’m so strong,” she said, quietly.  Then, a little louder, with what may or may not have been a foot stomp.  “I am so STRONG!”

I turned in and held her, knowing we’d soon be crying, any minute now.  “I wasn’t sure I’d even be here…”  I squeezed her a little tighter and realized I had feared the same thing.

In all my life, I can never remember being so thankful for anything on Thanksgiving.  Standing there with my beautiful, strong and resilient gramma and feeling how THERE she really was are probably the most profound examples of gratitude I have ever experienced on that day.

It’s now been a year since her diagnosis, and after a visit to the doctor today, her blood tests and scans are all fantastic.  Way to kick ass, Gramma J.

I’m proud of my family.  I come from heaps of love and support and laughter.  And I think one of my most recent favorite realizations as I made fun of my mom for being the spitting image of her mom is that if I’m as much like MY mom as everyone tells me, then that means when I grow up, I’m going to be a lot like Billie Jean.  That sounds pretty great to me, and I couldn’t be happier about it.