Static in the eyes

I knew my father's mother as "Mummi" when I was a little girl. I barely knew her name, because "Mummi" is how people referred to her when speaking to me. Mummi was a granny of steel, an indestructible, active, tough old lady who was even more stubborn than me, but surprisingly sweet and caring as well. She is still sweet,  but communicating with her is hard these days. She is lying in a hospital bed and is a translucent version of her former self.

The kids in the neighbourhood called her "Prätkä Mummo", which means "Biker Granny". She didn't own a motorbike or wear a leather jacket, but she had this aura of badassness. On the inside, she was a softy. If you got caught trying to steal apples from her apple trees, you would get a verbal lashing, but if you asked, you could pick as many as you liked.

More than once, Mummi would tell me what to do: set the table, or do some other chore. I remember being furious with her. "You're not my mother!" I told her. After some argument, I did it anyway, because she was the Prätkämummo and could be scary when she was angry.

I grew up abroad, away from her, so I didn't see her very often. As such, one of the most significant presents she gave me was a casette. She recorded herself singing lullabies for me, and while I have no idea where the tape has been for the past few  decades, I always think of her whenever I hear "Aa tuti-lulla". Her voice is soft, warm and comforting.

Until her knees started to bother her, she was a passionate  gardener. She cultivated all manner of beautiful flowers and berry bushes, and was proud of her garden. She also fed the birds, and enjoyed whistling to them and hearing their replies. She could identify them by their calls and by their looks, and was excited whenever she saw a new or rare bird. Then it was straight to her bird book, and she would point out the bird and imitate the call, though that is sometimes a bit hard to do when the call is written down as "Ti-ti-tyy". Mummi loved the birds, but hated it when squirrels came to raid the birdfeed stands. She would chase them away with a broom, and curse at them. I liked to call them her friends. She kept trying different elaborate birdfeeders to outsmart the squirrels, but they always figured out a way, and out she would go, waving her broom.

Despite her dislike of squirrels, she once found an injured squirrel cub and took it upon herself to nurse it back to health. For a time, it lived in a woolen sock hanging from a wall in her house, and I think she let it run around in her home and sit on her shoulder when it recovered enough before she released it back into the wild. I can't be sure, as I didn't visit during this time, but as a kid, having a grandma with a pet squirrel who lives in a sock is an infinitely cool thought. I like to imagine that it came back to visit her birdfeeder and that maybe she chased them away a bit less adamantly.

As a child, I had long, wild hair. It was long enough for me to sit on, and brushing it was a painful chore. My Mummi never seemed to mind though. She would call me to come sit down in a chair in front of her, and she would brush it, and braid a silk ribbon into my pigtails, and tie it up. She was infinitely gentle, and it never hurt, no matter how long and tangled my hair was. I remember being sad on the day she ran out of silk ribbons.

There is a kind of bird which is obsessed with the color blue. It will decorate its nest (on the ground) with blue flowers, shells, stones, feathers, strings, and anything else that is blue that it can get its beak on in an attempt to impress its would-be mate. Mummi had something in common with this bird. When presented with a choice of colors, she would say: "The color doesn't matter, just as long as it's blue".

Mummi could probably have told you what the name of the blue-obsessed bird is, as she was also an avid watcher of nature programs. I  enjoyed sitting in the bed or chair and  watching  programs with her about the exotic Galapagos islands, or the African savannas with her.
When she wasn't watching nature programs, it would be crime and murder series. She didn't speak any language other than Finnish, but that didn't stop her from watching "CSI", "Der Alte", or "Morse".
She also enjoyed watching winter sports - especially ice hockey. But I remember her saying she wouldn't watch the finals between Finland and Sweden, because then Finland would lose. (I'm not sure why not watching would cause Finland to win though, as we have a bad habit of losing to Sweden anyway.)

My Mummi was always a dog-person, and didn't much like cats until she got one of her own. When her husband passed away, a large part of her also died. She seemed to lack purpose, and was lonely. Her daughter made her agree to a trial period of taking one of their farm cats to keep her company. It is a tiny cat who spoke in little squeaks, and was capable of great anti-gravity feats. She named the cat "Piipero" because of its voice and after a cat she had when she was a child. (Piipero didn't say "miaw", she said "Piiiii!" Mummi grew fond of the cat despite herself and kept it. After Mummi was hospitalized, and it was apparent she wasn't coming out of there, the cat was given away to another elderly lady and still lives.

When I think of Mummi, there are a few things I associate with her. She:
  - loved to make dandelion wine
  - collected gazillions of empty jam jars in her attic
  - made me a little cork figurine with a hat and hair and a drawn face which I treasured
  - drank more than she should
  - was a great cook (until the Blue Sausage Incident, which left everyone including the dog sick)
  - loved ice cream, water chestnuts, salmon, and UHT milk (mainly because it was the right size to fit in her little fridge)
  - had a beautiful wooden toy truck I loved to play with
  - was open-minded

Let me explain that last one to you. One New Year's Eve, we went to her house to celebrate and shoot fireworks together with the neighbours. At the time, I was in a long-distance relationship with an Austrian boy. In true Finnish fashion, my neighbours (who were younger than Mummi) imbibed more alcohol than they should have and got pretty sloshed. They had heard about my boyfriend, and were evidently unhappy about it. They began a speech about how foreign boys are coming to our wonderful country and stealing our innocent Finnish girls. I didn't know what to say; these people, whom I had always thought of as reasonable adults, were suddenly flaming xenophobes! I was bewildered, confused, and angry.
Luckily, Mummi would have none of it. She defended me, and made me proud. "Here is my granny," I thought to myself, "many many years your senior, but so much younger in mind than you." I was infinitely proud of her and will never forget how she stood up for me.

She is now, as I wrote before, hospitalized with various problems including dementia. She is physically half the size she used to be. Her skin is translucent, and you can see the outline of her skull without need for imagination, because she seldom eats. She is a shade of her former self, although I suppose she retains some of her stubborness in the way she rejects food or treatments sometimes.
I last visited her yesterday evening with my mother. It was hard. I couldn't communicate with her. She didn't speak a word, but she nodded a few times when we asked her questions. Her mouth was set in a line and her cheeks were sunken. My eyes would not stop crying, and I hate myself for it. I feel I should portray some form of illusion of hope when I visìt her, but so much of her is already gone.

Today, it seems she was better. When my brother visited her to feed her lunch, she had already eaten without his help. Unusually, the nurses managed to feed her almost her entire lunch. Apparently she even spoke entire sentences instead of just one or two words.

We will visit her tomorrow, and I hope she will be more like she was today. When we spoke to her yesterday, she didn't do anything except stare back at us with a blank expression with a look that reminded me of static on a tv screen.

I remember Mummi as she was. This is the way I want to remember her, not the way she is now. I love her dearly, though I don't think I have told her that enough over the years. I hope she knows it.