Granddaughter on phone: “She’s really mad.” Daughter: “I hear her. She’s yelling.”

Son on phone to sister: “What a jerk.”

Grandma J: “I hate it … It’s … red. I hate it red. Send it back.”

Grandma Judy is older than me and I am old. She has survived breast cancer and a heart event that left her dead before being restored to life. And alive she is: independent, still driving — short trips — baking cookies, playing mah jong and winning at cards. She follows the current news with a paper copy of the newspaper because she likes the feel of a real paper. And more.

She is always on hand to celebrate the major events of her children, five grandchildren and extended family. As well as keeping abreast of the lesser events: a new apartment, basketball games, trips, school assignments. Those basics in the day-to-day accomplishments or woes of loved ones.

She can be opinionated, but mostly she is the epitome of elderly restraint. Once when one of her beloved grand girls FaceTimed a possible checkered outfit, she quickly replied, “You’re going to wear a tablecloth out?” She is, in sum, at 88, still deeply attached to life and family. That is until now. Until the walker.

“I don’t need a walker,” she told her son, the one who sent her a red walker. I don’t need a walker, she told her daughter, who sent her the free one, part of her medical plan. The one she didn’t send back, because after all it was free. However, both she refused to use.

Her children, however, are persistent to her stubborn. They brought in reinforcements: a beloved doctor daughter-in-law, her own doctor and the latest medical report from her well-read newspaper. “Falls,” the experts said, “are the number one killer of the elderly.” Besides, her family team argued, there is the added problem of neuropathy. Grandma Judy can’t feel her feet, meaning she is even more prone to trips and tumbles.

But what about Grandma Judy? What’s her position? Why was this utterly rational, life-loving person staging a protest campaign against the very tool that will promote her independence and safety? Refusing to even give it a try? After all, she will happily take a hand when needed and likes the added stability of pushing a shopping cart in the grocery store. Do you see a pattern?

I get it, as a fellow elder. I get how as we get older, we struggle for our dignity. We face the fear of not only being old but worse, looking old. An awkward visibility that increases our sense of vulnerability and dependence. Relief, but also hesitation, when considerate strangers offer us a seat or lift a heavy package for us.

I’m recalling my own embarrassment as several people offered to hoist my suitcase on the train the other day. What? Did I look that old? Or the kind man running to my rescue when I tripped on a poorly placed mat in the store. How awkward and clumsy of me.

“Hold on,” my attentive husband says, as I walk downstairs, creating in me the very urge to show I don’t need to hold on because I’m sturdy and stable and young. Or when one of my children gives me a hand to help me in or out of their car. And why must they make car seats up too high for normal humans? It’s a constant tango between the frailties of aging and the follies of ego.

As for the walker and Grandma Judy, it has a happy ending. A Thanksgiving sort of ending as family gatheres together and a walker makes an appearance. The free one, not the red one. It is assembled and demonstrated. And then, another grandparent, well imagining his own future needs, wheels it about, demonstrates its capacities and then gives Grandma Judy a few private lessons until suddenly it isn’t so bad, it isn’t so undignified, and it even has a seat if tired.

And the next day, it is allowed to accompany a museum excursion.

“I couldn’t have done the museum without it,” Grandma Judy announced, no further explanation needed.

P.S. The walker, she reports of late, is now sitting in the car trunk because it’s too heavy to lift. If you want to borrow it, she says, just ask.

Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.