May 15, 2025

By Jamie Towey

I’m a lucky guy – I grew up knowing both my grandmothers.

My maternal grandmother, Ann Griffith, was an army brat born at the very end of 1931 (her emphasis). Her father, an army cavalry colonel who fought in China with Chiang Kai-Shek during WWII, frequently played polo with one General S. Patton before the war. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard about the later general Patton taking a bath in their tub after one particularly dusty match. Grandma went on to have six children with Harry Augustus Griffith, a strapping West Point graduate who eventually became a three-star general. Grandma is still kicking at 93 years old and I’m grateful for every day she’s with us.

My dad’s mom, Florence Towey, was of French heritage and took her first breath in 1918 and her last in 2014 at the ripe old age of 96. Ya Ya, as we called her, had five kids of her own with her husband E.J. Towey, a Navy Seabee she met as a pen pal during WWII when he was stationed in the Pacific.

Boy, did those women teach me a lot.

Ya Ya was one tough cookie. She raised her five children largely on her own after she and my grandfather divorced, an uncommon family setup for Jacksonville, FL in the 1970s. I remember lying on the floor playing with a mechanical giraffe every time we visited her Tallahassee apartment under her loving watch from as early as the age of five. She always had butterscotch treats in a dish that my siblings, cousins, and I would suck on while we milled around.

Ya Ya was so loyal. She wasn’t a bubbly lady, but I can distinctly remember moments where she’d be touched by something one of us kids said or did, and you could see appreciation shine in her eyes. She had an understated, incisive sense of humor. It seemed she could soften anything with a joke or a one-liner. I remember when I was in college telling her over the phone that I was taking a class on Charlemagne; “I went to school with Charlemagne,” she quipped.

And like I said, she was tough. By the time she died, she had powered through a number of strokes and an austere life. She took it all in stride, rarely complained (at least to her grandchildren), and stayed true to her faith at every step. She may not have preached on street corners, but given the many hardships she endured, that woman truly lived her convictions. And bonus points to Ya Ya, she helped answer phones for Aging with Dignity in our early days!

Grandma is very much a people person. When we’d go to her house as kids, she always had something special planned for us. She’d hold tea parties for us, we’d read books like Corduroy and Good Dog Carl with her, and she’d paint pictures of us commanding pirate ships or waging battles against dragons.

I actually lived with Grandma for almost a year after college. I couldn’t commit to a full-time job because I was waiting for my security clearance to go through (my first job was at the FBI), so I got a great view of her up close. I watched how she maintained dear friendships with her friends as they aged and how she never stopped contemplating ways she could help this grandson, that son, that great granddaughter. She truly wanted everyone she knew to be happy.

And like Ya Ya, she had a deep faith. It carried her through my grandfather’s battle with Alzheimer’s, an emotionally tumultuous and physically taxing time for her, as well as the loss of a son to cancer nearly three years ago. Through it all, Grandma remains cheery, hospitable, and eager to swap stories about the old days.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my wife’s grandparents on her mom’s side, both of whom are still alive – Heribert and Rita. They are German and live near Frankfurt. We visited them this past summer and we got to take part in a nightly ritual that has sustained their love for over fifty years. Each evening they have a glass of German Riesling and recap the day. So much for the negative health impacts of alcohol!

Okay, good for you, Jamie, you knew your grandparents. So what?

Well, I saw a quote from the recently deceased Pope Francis, where he described how wrong it is for society to push the elderly to the margin when, in reality, they have so much to offer:

“Amid the frenzy of our societies, often devoted to the ephemeral and the unhealthy taste for appearances, the wisdom of grandparents becomes a shining beacon, shedding light on uncertainty and providing direction to grandchildren, who can draw from their experience something ‘extra’ for their daily lives.”

Mother’s Day typically conjures up images of young moms holding infants or driving kids to soccer practice, but let’s not forget our grandmothers and the many women who, though lacking children, shepherd boys and girls, young men and young women by their wisdom and maternal warmth. I’m thinking of the teachers, nurses, corporate office mainstays, social workers, counselors, volunteers, librarians, doctors, and even our neighbors who are “shining beacons” to those around them.

As we age, we not only share wisdom with the younger generations, but we model the long, protracted change from providing care to receiving care. Dependency. By shutting our old in nursing homes and pushing for “more efficient” healthcare solutions like telehealth (i.e. more isolating ones) we miss out on some of the most fundamental parts of being human, like the reality of suffering, the reality that we all must love and be loved.

A thriving society depends on intergenerational interaction, because all of us will reach the point where we need to be taken care of by someone else. Like my beloved grandmothers, will we be up to the task?

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)