Checking up on Grandma

About three Saturdays ago I was asked to make sure that my grandmother was doing ok. Mom and Dad were on a hiatus down south a little ways speaking at a conference. Since Grandma spends her week days alone, my mom didn't want her spending this particular Saturday alone as well.

At approximately 10:30, I made the short drive over to my parents house. I had been told the back door would be unlocked. I was to just walk in, check on things and perhaps make a little small talk. When I got to the back door, however, I found it locked up tight as a drum.

I knocked and hoped that Grandma might be able to hear me. As I stood at the backdoor I realized the inevitable. Grandma can't hear us across a table at dinner. She wasn't going to hear me knocking at the door. Perhaps she would hear a ultra loud new doorbell at the front of the house. Around the house, I trekked. I say trek because the bushes around the front walk are overwhelming and my parents can not seem to get them trimmed properly. When I finally rang the doorbell, I heard the chimes ringing from inside the house. I waited. And I waited. - Nothing, again.

Back around the house I went. This time I banged on the glass windows and the door. Still no movement from within the house. I was beginning to feel slightly panicky. After all, Grandma is old. What if her time had come on the day I was supposed to drop in. What would I do? I pushed those thoughts away and sallied up to her window. I could hear a faint droning inside and felt sure it was the t.v. I leaned over the prickly holly and knocked on the window. - Nothing- Not to be daunted (or have to tell my mother that I had not actually seen Grandma all day) I flattened myself next to the corner of the house and worked my way to the window, the prickly holly to my backside.

I reached the window and had the sudden thought that I might be able to open it from the outside. It might just be that the window would be unlocked here. As luck would have it, Grandma's window was unlocked and I began to push upward hoping to make entrance from the outside. As I pushed on the window, I looked in through the blinds to find Grandma on the phone. Part of me wanted to just let Grandma be, but then she was expecting my company, so I carried on trying to push open the window.

Well, I pushed a little too hard and the window fell inward knocking over a standing lamp. I was now leaning inside the house, holding up the window and trying to right the lamp. Grandma was still jabbering away on the phone. "Grandma", I yelled at the top of my lungs. I was maybe 24 inches from where she was sitting in her lazyboy. She was oblivious! I yelled at her again. And again. Still nothing, but I continued to yell in the hopes that something might change. Finally, she told her phone companion that she could hear what sounded like my boys at the front of the house. She hung up. I continued to yell, thinking that surely she would now hear me trying to get her attention while holding up the window only inches from her chair.

She lifted herself off the lazyboy and got her walker. To my amazement, she went towards the hallway. She still couldn't hear where the noise was coming from. By some sort of grace, at the door of her room, she turned to see her youngest granddaughter half in the room, holding up the window and lamp. Her only statement "My goodness! What are you doing there!?"