Grandma Hilda

My grandmother was my favorite woman to ever walk the earth. She was different, and she was proud of it. Her hair was thick and long and always died a deep glossy black. She would roll it and then put it up in a bun. Red was her favorite color. She wore red blouses made of silk and the color of her lipstick was the color of a juicy ripe red apple. She wore high heels until she was forced into a wheelchair. She only shopped in downtown Vienna, even though it meant a 30 minute cab ride both ways, because that's just what classy women did. She would buy shoes of only the finest leather and wrap herself in fur coats. She was a Hollywood diva stuck in a domestic housewife role - in the shadow of my grandfather, the doctor. An arranged marriage, but he loved her and embraced her eccentricities and princess entitlement. "I always wanted to take the stage," she said one day, "and be an opera singer or an actress at the theater. I wanted to be a princess." "Well, you are my princess now," my grandfather responded, as he put on her shoes. Or so the story goes.

She was unique. She took me shopping for lacy underwear when I was 16. My mother didn't understand the "importance" of fancy lingerie. My grandmother did. She, who washed all her clothes by hand, despite the washing machine my grandfather bought her. Because those were for lazy women. She, who perfumed every single piece of clothing before carefully hanging it in her closet. She, who had the softest skin of all, because she slathered it in expensive lotion every day after her bath.

She sent her daughters to boarding school, because motherhood did not come naturally to her. And it's what you did to get your daughters the best education, with strict morals. She stayed up late into the night and slept until the sun was high up in the sky. Lunch was always served at 4:00 pm, because she never managed to get her excellent cooking done any sooner. She only ate the finest cheeses and cold cuts, and she liked her coffee strong. She read the paper every day and once I moved an ocean away, she sent me clippings of the latest fashion news. That, or stories about animals. She loved animals, the wild ones, the free ones.

I hated to see her waste away in a wheelchair those last couple of years before she died. Dependent on the care of another, and reduced to the simplicities of her oldest' lifestyle. Soup came from a package then. Cheese was eaten by hand not fork. Hair was greasy and grey and pulled back into a braid. Clothes were baggy and used. She didn't talk much anymore, but I could see in her blank stares that she was living in her own personal hell. I could always see her soul through her eyes. Maybe I was the only one who ever could. Maybe it's why I'm the only one who ever understood her and loved her despite her complicated eccentricities, which some might have called rude at times.

I brought expensive French cheese over for her once, when I was back home for a visit. She started picking at it like a hungry savage. It made me so very sad. I lived so far away then, and I felt like I deserted her. I, the only ally she ever had. I, the only grandchild of four who adored her. I, the only grandchild who visited when she still lived alone and her schizophrenia fueled by loneliness turned her into a paranoid, scared old woman, convinced that her neighbors were stealing from her at night. She gave me so much of her treasured jewelry so that the imaginary thieves wouldn't get away with it. I took it, with a bleeding heart, knowing I'd never appreciate it the same way she did. But it gave her peace to know it was safe with me.

Every year, when it was time for me to return back to the states after my visit home, she would wish me the best life and bless me, drawing a small cross on my forehead with her thumb. And then she would say: "This is the last time I'll see you. I won't be around next time." And I'd say: "Nonsense. We'll see each other again." When she suffered her final stroke, I sent her flowers and I cried heavy tears, because I couldn't be there to hold her hand and see her off. But at her funeral I smiled. I could feel her relief. She was finally free - free to be who she always wanted to be: a star high up in the sky. And I promised that I would see her again.