Grandma Rose

Grandma  Rose always wore a crystal angel pinned to her shoulder.  It sparkled in the sun.  When I was seven, I asked her why she wore it. She told me it reminds her that there's always an angel on her shoulder keeping her and her family safe. Grandma was very close to her angels. She dedicated her life to her angels.

Her house reflected her devotion.  Thousands of candles, statuettes, and paintings of the beautiful, winged creatures. Grandma Rose spoke to her angels. To an outsider, it might look like she was talking to herself. An old women wandering through a maze of clutter mumbling.  But that was not the case.  When I was a little girl we'd sit on her couch,  quietly listening to the angels.  They were talking to her, telling her stories. I wondered if they'd ever talk to me.

Grandma Rose's dementia progressed as she aged. The older she got, the more angels she saw and the more frightening they became.  One day as we sat alone in her room, she asked me to please send them away because they were too loud and wouldn't let her get any rest. I was twelve.

Grandma Rose's brain died slowly, over the course of many years. I was twenty-four when her body gave up and she joined her angels completely. By that time, she had lost the ability to form full sentences, recognize her own reflection, and differentiate between all the anonymous faces surrounding her, both real and imagined.

When I think of Grandma Rose, I like to remember her as she was when I was a little girl, quietly sitting on her couch, with an angel sparkling on her shoulder.