A survivor

Believe it or not,  this smiling face has been through a couple of wars, lost a son and a husband, had to flee her home with nothing more than a bundle of clothes and travelled for days on a small tractor-trailer, some years later ended up in a hospital with a broken hip and was quickly sent back home because the patients who make it over eighty are here considered to be too old for surgery. The doctors said she had a few months left to live so they sent her home to die. Boy, were they wrong! She is over ninety these days.

Unfortunately, not many people manage to smile themselves out of depressing lives (as described in the previous post  How to survive escaping a bullet? ) so I became intrigued with this rare phenomenon. What makes my only surviving Granny beat all the  medical statistics and common fates?

Is it hours on end of a hard field work in the scorching sun dressed in her black mourning clothes, tiring herself to sleep? And when the night finally comes, sleeping in the open on a bare land to protect sheep from wolves with her tiny body? Living next to a son she adores and  keeping a motherly eye on him and his family, even today when he is over sixty? Being under constant care of her daughter and son-in-law until her hip healed and she learnt to walk again with a stick? Settling in a place with lots of grannies in the neighbourhood and having coffee sessions with them on a daily basis? Making long walks to return the visits or just to stretch her legs and breathe in some fresh air? Living in her own separate space, free to set up her own daily rhythm? Doing her own cooking, cleaning and washing with an occasional help from the outside? Knowing that there is always somebody she can count on in case she needs it? Accepting whatever life brings her way without too many whys? Being a believer? Making jokes about everything, including death?

When after five years of living in the exile my Granny was finally told that it is safe to return home, she decided not to. The reason she gave was that she could not live without people. Her village was almost empty as some of her former neighbours died in the exile while others had gone who knows where in search of better and more promising future for their children.  So each summer Granny travels a distance of 500 miles to spend a month in her home village, but always returns. The only one-way trip home will be when she dies. She has been saving up all these years to be buried next to her dearest.

In the meantime, Granny needs people to live. The photo above was taken at a friends and family gathering late in the evening after she refused to be taken home to take her usual medicine. She explained it in her simple, straightforward manner: “Medicine? What medicine? This is my medicine!”. She was the last to leave the party.