About 10 years ago, maybe a little longer, my grandmother told me if she ever ended up in a nursing home, I should just push her wheelchair into the Hudson River and walk away.

                         ^{My grandmother & my son Ty.}

 Those are not her exact words – but you get the essence.

 She worked hard for her home in Hoboken, NJ. The $97 (or so) monthly mortgage was hard to make, and at one time, she had to borrow $500 from her employer to avoid foreclosure. But she got her family out of the projects; she intended to keep it that way.

 Grammy. She’ll be 97 next week. She’s had a hell of a busy life – a career woman before there was such a term, a mother of four boys, a God-fearing Catholic, the wife of an alcoholic Vet and the eldest of three sisters and a brother. All of her sisters died of breast cancer long ago.

 Grandpa. Her husband. Shell-shocked from the war, she was told. Got the benefits to go with it, which eventually made her house tax-free when he finally keeled over at 71. That’s the best thing he ever did for her – being a Vet and keeling over. But she loved him – and was bringing him steak and sausage from the butcher to build his strength when she found him dead, a lit cigarette in his fingers, a half bottle next to his chair.

 I go to see Grammy in the nursing home every week – more than I ever saw her in the Hoboken brownstone she misses so dearly. The nursing home is by far the nicest one I’ve ever been in (and I’ve been in a lot – used to sing with various church groups over the holidays, trying to find God and save my soul).

 When I was in those nursing homes – mostly full of women in wheelchairs – I knew my grandmother was right: dramatic drowning. I never wanted to see her head lobbed to the side, drool trickling out of the corner of her mouth. Or babbling to an imaginary, long-dead friend – or worse --  feeding pigeons in the hall that weren’t there at all.

 But she’s now in a nursing home,  and has been wheelchair-bound for years. Reverse mortgages kept her in the house she once fought to keep, and the equity afforded her 10-16 hours a day help. But eventually the banks said no more, and no one – not even my cousins Brian and Chris, who were there daily to help , or my father who’s a master at mortgages – could prevent the inevitable.

 She’s been in the nursing home about two months now. And she hasn’t asked me to push her into the Hudson, which is a just a few blocks away. She’s in a great space, really. The help is prompt, the walls sparkly, and there’s no nursing home smell. She gets physical therapy everyday – in the hope that she’ll be able to shuffle with a walker and move upstairs with the other residents who go on regular outings – even to Atlantic City, one of her favorite places.

 I asked her yesterday: Is the therapy helping? Do you think you’ll walk?

 No, she said. But if she could just stand  and make it from the wheelchair to the bed at night … that’s all she wants. The Hoya lift – she said it hurts. And she hates the process, which limits her decision to hang out in one place or another.

 When you’re physically 97 and mentally 67 (or even 57) – it’s not a happy crossroad. She hasn’t walked in many, many years. Her bones and joints failed long ago, but her mind flourished. She reads a book a week and does a crossword puzzle when she’s stuck in the hallway during the daily room cleaning time.

 I try to get there during that time, just after lunch, when the others are lined up in the hall, and a nice aid plays catch with the ones who aren’t dozing. Gram? She does her crossword puzzle. Throw the ball at her? She’ll whip it back at you, dodge-ball style. She is so not playing catch!

 Gram? She’s lucky. And the envy of the very few people on her floor who still have a part of their brain working. That’s the blessing of a big Irish, Catholic(ish) family that tend to hang around where they grew up. She has visitors daily – sometimes a few at a time.

 My drunken grandfather left enough of a Vets pension – combined with her own, and the sale of her Hoboken brownstone – to ensure she’s in a kick-ass nursing home (if there is such a thing).

 The people are nice there – the employees. She’s made friends with them, and so many have said to me “your grandmother is a pleasure to have here. No one else here remembers my name.” They bring her coffee from home, and the newspaper everyday – they know she’s too bright to be among the mentally-missing that are all around her.

 But what to do when you’re older than old, smarter than smart, and can’t stand or walk? You’re dependent on the able-bodied people around you -- paid, unpaid, family or not.

 We can all learn from women like my grandmother, who alone raised her four crazy boys and took care of a drunken husband. She knows acceptance. She’s a living serenity prayer – “God grant me the courage to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 Yesterday she told me that at first she hated this place, this nursing home, the loss of the house she worked so hard to hang on to, that home that ended up selling under-priced and handed to strangers who would never know its history.

 And she hates not being in charge. She wants her toast and coffee at a time that breakfast isn’t served. She doesn’t want to go to bed at 7:30 or 8 p.m. She said she hates having to do things when they say it’s time.

 But she also said she’s come to accept it. And she had gratitude because she knows she is blessed.

 Still. She said she prays to God everyday, asking to be done with this already. She’s ready to go. And when anyone visits, she’ll talk you’re ear off, like she just has to get every last word in … because it might be her last.

 And it might. But she’s OK with that. She accepts things how they are. And knows the only she can change is her attitude.

 The nursing home employees are right – she is a pleasure.  We’re all lucky to have her.  And I’m lucky she hasn’t asked to go for a walk to the Hudson River.