Sitting comfortably on my grandparents’ red loveseat, I waited anxiously for my mamone (our name for grandmother) to read one of her many stories. Underneath a small night stand she plucked my favorite book – Watch Out for the Chicken Feet in Your Soup by Tomie dePaola.
She sat down next to me, wetting her finger to better turn the beautifully illustrated pages. “Now listen Eugene, my grandma is nice,” she read, shooting me a smile. “But she pinches my cheeks a lot and her house is full of funny old stuff.”
The matriarchal Italian grandmother portrayed in the book – always cooking and spoiling her grandson – reminded me of mamone and the old house I always loved to visit.
Listening to my mamone read books was my favorite part of any trip to my grandparents’ quaint ranch-style home, save for maybe sneaking into their pantry to eat some Oreos or butterscotch Tastykakes.
I was of course always caught and softly scolded, but I knew my mamone had placed the treats on the bottom shelf just so my short arms could reach them.
As I grew older, as children stubbornly do, my life became busier. The trips to my grandparents’ house became more infrequent. After a while, fewer boxes of Tastykakes stocked the pantry’s shelves, and the books my mamone used to read to me started to collect dust.
I had almost forgotten these distant memories until a few weeks ago when I visited my mamone again, this time in a nursing home. For years, mamone had struggled with dementia, a horrible disease I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy.
By the end of her life, my mamone forgot how to feed herself, go to the bathroom and speak. Daily tasks as simple as swallowing ice cream – her favorite food – took minutes, sometimes longer, to accomplish.
Just weeks before her passing on March 15, my mamone was confined to a wheelchair and was nearly unresponsive.
A common misconception about dementia is that only the person with the disease loses his/her memory. More often than not, family members struggle to remember the person who they slowly lose as the disease progresses.
On one of my final visits, I reached over to her nightstand and pulled out a story book that my mom had brought from home. While my once lively mamone sat still and quiet, I began to read The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado.
As I read, I made sure to always show her the illustrations that adorned each page, just as she had done for me years ago.
The book recounted the life of a small lamb unable to travel to new pastures because of his crippled leg. The lamb was left behind with only one friend to keep him company. Yet, in the stillness and quiet of the night, the holy family – Jesus, Joseph and Mary – found shelter in the manger where the feeble lamb was sleeping.
While the lamb couldn’t offer much, he slept against the baby Jesus to keep him warm and safe from the cold of the night, reminding him that he was not alone.
As the lamb took his place once again beside his friend he said, “you were right, God does have a special place for me.”
When I held up the picture of the once forgotten but now proud little lamb, I could see a faint smile come across my mamone’s face.
It was in that moment that I could see she remembered me, and, looking at her smile, I remembered her too.
Tyler Grudi is a staff writer for The Bona Venture. His email is gruditj15@bonaventure.edu
