Yesterday, I had a lengthy conversation with my mom on the phone. We talk a couple of times a month. If you are wondering, one of my life choices led me more than 4000 km away from my home town. My parents and I keep in touch via phone and facebook, mostly phone. Those conversations are very important to me. Despite what I thought as a teenager, that my parents were not nice. Now, as an adult, I do realize that I was oh so wrong. I love my parents dearly and I find myself very fortunate to have the relationship I have with them now. I’m glad they are just a phone call away. Another person that I use to call about once a month was my maternal grandmother. Even as a kid I would call her regularly and take my bicycle to go visit her and my grandpa. I did this until I moved away at age 24.
A few years ago my maternal grand father passed, then my paternal grand mother and then my maternal grand mother suffered a CVA (Cardio Vascular Accident). She is now left with limited communications abilities. She as been struggling to read, talk and even comprehend speech. It must have been devastating for her for she was a avid reader of all kinds, loved doing cross words and watching tv shows. With time she’s regaining some of her speech abilities and she can do simple readings and I think she still watch some tv. My grandma is a fighter. She’s 88 years old and still lives at home and maintain it herself on top of her cooking.
I have been wanting to communicate with her. So far it’s gone only one way through my mother giving me news of how she is doing when she goes to visit her. I would like to go visit but more than 4000km separate us. I will go see her next time I visit my family but regular visits are out of question at this time. If I had a private jet that could work! But until then another way needed to be found. I’m not sure if she does miss our conversations but I sure want her to know that I haven’t forgotten her. She was such a big part of my life growing up that I need to be there for her in a way.
After discussing ideas with my mom we came to the idea that sending pictures of what I’m doing would be a way. The Grandma project was born. I’m a little ashamed that it took nearly a year to get this small project started. I decided to commit to this project today and it’s now completed. Well, almost! I still need to ship it. It’s Sunday today so the post office is closed. It will be packaged and ready to go by the morning.
What I did is collect selfies of things I have done and took a lot of pictures over the months. I then printed them and put them in a small photo album. Then I wrote a very easy to read description on a label and put it on each pictures. Very simple but it should work as a communication device. My mother will be able to be the intermediate between my grandmother and I. We are back to the snail mail days with lots of time in between. While I wait to know if she liked it, I will continue to collect selfies and pictures of my whereabouts in case that there’s going to be a continuation of this project. I really hope to do this on a more regular basis.
Bike in Time 