It's Grandma Day! | Beating the Bulge

Day 16 - It’s Grandma Day!

by Michael on 12/05/09 at 1:00 pm

I love May; next to September, it’s my favourite month. May is the month in which my maternal grandmother, was both born and died. Her name was Marie, Yvonne, Emelia, Andre Lamarre. A few years ago (exactly how many I’m unsure, but maybe as many as eight) my partner, Ted, was walking home from a midnight shift and he found a medal on the sidewalk. I came by the medal a few days later sitting on our coffee stable amongst some change. It looked like my grandmother’s medal, which I have in my jewelry box. (It’s the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, popularly known as the Miraculous Medal.) I compared the two medals, and indeed, they were the same except the one Ted found was in English and my grandmother’s was in French.

My grandmother was French-Canadian and Catholic, but when she married my grandfather she was no longer able to practice her religion because her mother-in-law, who ruled the roost, forbad it. My great-grandmother also wasn’t fond of French people, so my grandmother wasn’t able to teach her children French. And so I struggled to learn it in high school.

I asked Ted about the medal and he told me how he came to find it. It suddenly occurred to me that it was May, and then, I was startled when I realized that my grandmother’s birthday had just past.Â Then as I started putting the pieces together, a chill ran up my spine when I figured out that Ted and I were having this discussion on the anniversary ofÂ my grandmother’s death. And it turned out that Ted had found the medal on my grandmother’s birthday. That weekend I took Ted to visit my grandmother’s grave and to introduce him to her properly; after all, she seems to have gone through a great deal of tinkering to let us know she was hanging around.

Ever since that time, I’ve had the medal on a chain, which I often, but not always, wear around my neck. It’s accompanied by a glass tube of blue-coloured water and a grain of rice on which is written “Mike & Ted,” a Celtic turtle (another big symbol for me), and my Medic Alert tag. In the early days I wore it all the time, and then years later, only when I needed some comforting; but now I usually wear the chain whenever I leave the house because it carries my Medic Alert tag.

So I was pretty freaked out by the circumstances of coming into possession of this Medal of the Immaculate Conception. But in the years that followed, I would become even more unnerved. It seems that every year my grandmother likes to hang around in mid- to late-April and does so until May 12. And it’s during this time that my life usually takes interesting twists and turns. For instance, one year in May I got a new job (one that I wanted very badly) and a couple of years later, also in May, I made the decision to leave that same job and start out on my own. Another year I was fired from a job, but as a result, started my own business. This year, my yearning to start working on Beating the Bulge and my weight loss program came in April and, as you’ve been reading, I’ve been struggling with my commitment. And also this year, my Dad’s brother died on my grandmother’s birthday. Not great news at all, but just another weird addition to this little trinket around my neck.

So, on this year’s grandma day, I’m just pausing to remember a great woman. She lived a pretty hard life, separated from her family, religion, and culture; and ordered to deny who she was. I know where my persistence and perseverance comes from. And whether she’s really watching over me or not, I’m always grateful for the comfort the notion brings me. It’s a beautiful sunny morning, and I have a trainer session with Phil in a few hours. Have a good day, people!

Bookmark & Share This Beating the Bulge Post