#avantlalettre — Public Fediverse posts

#sms Texting avant la lettre!

A blog written in English

Don’t let yourself be fooled by this title. This blog is being written in English. It’s about my #moemoe’ as we say in my native Antwerp dialect. Moemoe was my maternal grandmother. Translated to English, the word moemoe would sound as ‘mummum’ in analogy to the Swedish word ‘mormor’, which refers to the mother of one’s mother. And since #moemoe means exactly that, the analogy completely fits. Moemoe died at nearly 79 in 1977 when I was about 12 years old. Of course for someone who lived between 1898 and 1977, it would have been impossible to have been acquainted with texting as we nowadays still do.

However, the way we communicated reminds me a bit of texting or #sms style language. Hence the expression #avantlalettre in the title. Allow me to explain a bit how our unique style of communication came about. When in her late sixties and early seventies, Moemoe started to experience difficulties when talking. By the time I had turned 6 years old, she no longer was able to utter any words at all. At that time I hadn’t heard of the term #aphasia yet, but I was able to read and write fluently. And Moemoe was still able to read and write notes too. That’s the way we communicated after she had stopped talking altogether. All went well for a while, until my grandmother experienced difficulties writing. Somehow, she was no longer able to properly hold a pen.

Luckily, our family is pretty resourceful and it was my mother who came up with the idea to use a combination of my toy mosaic board in which I had previously planted plastic pegs to compose my toddler art work and several sets of plastic alphabet letters. That way, we could lay the large size letters onto the mosaic board for my grandmother to read. Apart from no longer being able to physically write, her eyesight rapidly declined and it soon became apparent that reading glasses were not sufficient to restore her sight. But thanks to the mosaic board and and the sets of large letters, we were able to exchange short messages. And the style of these messages were oftentimes humorous, but mostly short. Hence the fact that they nowadays remind me of sms style text messages. We sure had fun together while this stage of my #moemoe physical decline lasted.

During the last stage of her live, she was no longer able to sit, let alone lay letters on a board. However, her memory always remained intact. My dear grandfather cared for her at home till one evening he sat in his easy chair to watch TV and enjoy a pint of beer. The next morning, their nextdoor neighbors were awoken by Moemoe thumping on the wall, because something was not right. Most probably, he had died in his chair while watching TV, because the set was still on and his beer had been poured in a glass, but was otherwise untouched.

After the sudden passing of her husband, Moemoe was admitted to the geriatric ward of the local hospital. She died 10 days after her husband, who we lovingly called Vava (daddad) or (farfar in Swedish) which would strictly speaking mean that he was the dad of my dad, which in this case doesn’t make sense. It was just a term of endearment.

So this was my blog for today! I hope you enjoyed this, and do rate my English.

Picture: Mahesh Patel, Pixabay #grandparents #sms #texting #english #story