Inheritance
Ellie Hartley
I grew up having six grandmothers. Two were the ones I shared blood with, three were
through marriage, and the other is Ms. Isabel.
She is a funny, kind, old lady.
She is a unique woman with an inspiring history.
She was born seven months before the end of WWI to a poor family in rural Germany.
She was elected by her village at fifteen to give a flower to Hitler when he visited
their town just after his election.
She and her family were persecuted in WWII. Her father was the only person left.
She married a US lieutenant general whom she once hated for his arrogance, partly because he snuck food through her basement window.
She is a wife and mother.
She loves dogs and spring, and salted taffy.
We have no blood relation to each other, but I inherited a lot from her.
Notably, we both hate children. I hate being a child, and she hates children. For that, we fit together: I was a child who never wished to act like one, and she had housework, some, good stories, and a bowl of miscellaneous stale treats.
The only child she liked! A practical, quiet companion. As entertaining as a dog that can talk and clean.
When I was six years old, on one of my visits, she said she was too tired to tell me a story. She handed me a book instead. It was too hard to read, so I left.
Ten years later, it is my favorite book. I came back with the same book, begging her to translate “sie sind das was betreiben.” She could not remember what it meant.
At seven, I brought her a matted white dog I found while walking to her house. She traded me an ivory statue for him. I forgot about that statue within a week.
Ten years later, I helped her put down her beloved Coco. She gave me the other half of the statue, and I couldn’t even recall where the first half may be. It was in an old camera case at the top of my closet with a piece taped back on.
On one visit when I was eight, I helped her redecorate her dining room because she had bought a new set of china, and she wanted the room to match. I was not careful and broke the handle off a cup.
Ten years later, I helped her son pack up that room so she could move into a retirement home. That cup still had dried glue poking out from the cracks where she fixed it.
When I was nine, I asked her why she always lingered while I worked. I joked and said that she was creepy like a ghost. She called me a chickadee, constantly darting off.
Ten years later, I begged her nurse to let me stay thirty minutes longer, even though she could not recognize me and was thin and didn’t smell like herself and couldn’t get up. I cried the two and a half hour ride home. Her son called me three days after.
During all of this, even in my most childish moments, she always gave me her love, often taking care of me when the adults in my life couldn’t rise to the occasion.
She died this spring.
During our years together, she always tried to teach me things.
How to read a hard book and translate German from a bilingual book.
How to care for precious things and how to fix them when they’re broken.
How to give someone your love despite them underestimating your worth.
But what she did get to teach me is that love isn’t always exchanged equally or even recognized in the moment. That sometimes, offering your care to someone who overlooks you is still an act of grace, not weakness.
She knew what it meant to love without conditions: to see someone’s quiet efforts, even when no one else did, even if it takes you a decade to see them fully.
And from her, I learned that loving someone doesn’t always change them, but it changes you. It makes you softer without making you small.
She showed me that to be kind in the face of disregard is not surrender: it is strength.
And if you can carry that kind of love with you, especially when it’s not returned in kind, you carry something more enduring than praise: you carry dignity.