2008 Woodie Awards
Fish and Bicycles
Antiphon for My Grandmother
Alice Price
Issue date: 11/30/01 Section: Opinion
My grandmother is dying. The woman who taught me to crochet, patiently baked bonbon cookies with me, and always beat me at Chinese checkers is lying in bed in a nursing home, with nurses and relatives spoon-feeding her and begging her to eat. Grandma doesn't want to eat. She doesn't want a feeding tube. She doesn't want any more drugs pumped into her pale, thin arms. She is ready to die. She sees Jesus above her closet. She says he comes to her every night.
My grandmother sees Jesus above her closet, and my mother thinks she's telling the truth.
Some people would dismiss her visions of Jesus as a sign that senility has finally taken over. People don't give much credence to visions nowadays. I didn't, either – until my scientific, skeptical mother postulated that God hasn't quite disappeared from the world.
Back in the days when bathing was considered unhealthy and dragons roamed the land, people saw God as a force to be reckoned with. The 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen, cloistered for almost her whole life, saw spectacular, colorful visions of stars and spirit. She experienced God as a personal, tangible presence as well as part of the greater work of creation. Hildegard's visions opened her eyes to a world in which God is part of every tree, shrub, and human being. Hildegard saw Jesus (colored blue, no less), and she was not the only one who believed that what she was seeing was real on some level. The Pope gave her visions ecclesiastical authority. Those visions were sometimes real enough to cause physical symptoms; if Hildegard did not answer the voice in her visions, she became gravely ill.
Hildegard's visions have been attributed to migraines. Her stars and swaths of color were relegated to visual disturbances caused by constricted blood vessels. Another visionary, St. Anthony, who witnessed violent, graphic battles between the devil and humanity, lent his name to an illness marked by hallucinations – St. Anthony's fire. St. Anthony's fire is now known as ergotism – the terrible visions have been traced to a fungus, Claviceps purpurea.
My grandmother sees Jesus above her closet, and my mother thinks she's telling the truth.
Some people would dismiss her visions of Jesus as a sign that senility has finally taken over. People don't give much credence to visions nowadays. I didn't, either – until my scientific, skeptical mother postulated that God hasn't quite disappeared from the world.
Back in the days when bathing was considered unhealthy and dragons roamed the land, people saw God as a force to be reckoned with. The 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen, cloistered for almost her whole life, saw spectacular, colorful visions of stars and spirit. She experienced God as a personal, tangible presence as well as part of the greater work of creation. Hildegard's visions opened her eyes to a world in which God is part of every tree, shrub, and human being. Hildegard saw Jesus (colored blue, no less), and she was not the only one who believed that what she was seeing was real on some level. The Pope gave her visions ecclesiastical authority. Those visions were sometimes real enough to cause physical symptoms; if Hildegard did not answer the voice in her visions, she became gravely ill.
Hildegard's visions have been attributed to migraines. Her stars and swaths of color were relegated to visual disturbances caused by constricted blood vessels. Another visionary, St. Anthony, who witnessed violent, graphic battles between the devil and humanity, lent his name to an illness marked by hallucinations – St. Anthony's fire. St. Anthony's fire is now known as ergotism – the terrible visions have been traced to a fungus, Claviceps purpurea.