Love Babushkas Everywhere

Love Babushkas Everywhere

Love Babushkas Everywhere ©

By Michael Casey

Well rather than try to amuse you this morning, 12^th March 2017, just so any literary historians are writing this down, I’m returning to my theme music, pain. I got up at 3am for a pain killer, my daughter also wanted a drink and Totoro our cat wanted out too. So my daughter had her drink and went back to bed, and I let the cat out, the cat joined some very late night revellers somewhere down the road. A cool cat on a hot tin roof no doubt.

I stayed up a couple of hours and then went back to bed at 5am, the cat was still out partying no doubt or watching Hot Fuzz on dvd somewhere with a drunk hungover neighbour. You have to wait for the painkiller to work, just paracetamol, if I took what I really needed I’d be a total junkie, so I just take paracetamol. I can see how people get addicted, but I’m no Michael Jackson, I’m more of an Elizabeth Taylor in drag, when she was very young and beautiful. Speaking of whom, my daughter went to London to see The Taming of the Shrew on Friday at the Globe. If you get a chance to go then do, sell your Babushkas and go.

I mean the Russian dolls that you should sell for Shakespeare tickets, not your grannie, though sometimes you could be tempted. This brings me to my theme, these little old ladies, our grannies, everybody’s grannies have been through a lot, so be nice to them. With old age comes pain, it’s a sad reality, aches and pains get bigger and we all live longer because of central heating and health care, well in general in UK that is. In my case 2013 was when Arthur my Arthritis arrived, we were in Malta and I had to buy Deep Heat spray on pain killer. My wife got up early to go by herself to see the Blue Window on Gozo while I stayed in Saint Juliana with the girls for the day, and yes that’s the one that a storm destroyed the other day.

Which means 4 years of on and off, high and low pain. Not forgetting the quadruple heart bypass that came along in Jan 2015, I was told it was a triple but 6 months later I was told I had 4 grafts when I had a review. You also get pain from the surgery, it takes 3 years to heal when you are my age, as I was forewarned by my Parish Priest who had the same operation. I’m telling you this so if you are my neighbour over the road that’s why the lights go on and off at all weird times of the night. It’s not clandestine Les Liaisons dangereuses, it’s just me heading for the medicine cabinet, the spirit would be willing but the flesh would be weak.

This brings me to your Babushka, all our babushkas, if you spare some time to hold their hand and listen, you don’t need to say anything, just listen. You may even sit there in silence, but for them they know you care because you are there. 21 years ago a baby was born, that was my nephew, he’s studying Bio Chemistry at York now. A few weeks later my mother died, his grannie. Then a few weeks after that my dad nearly died, it’s all in Padre Pio and Me by Michael Casey find it on the Internet. I spent 3 years visiting my dad every single day as did my sister, so I, we know about visiting Babushkas and just being there for them in their solitude and sometimes pain.  I know and love and remember the decades of laughter and pain that we share with our loved ones, with our Babushkas. Just give them what is their due, make time to visit or phone or facetime them.

As I sit I sit in the Dark of the Night with just my pain for company I can remember when I was sick, or when somebody I love was sick, it was our Babushkas who loved us and threw the rope of love and solace to pull us from the pool of pain. We should never forget that we are only always one generation away from being a babushka ourselves.