My mom's mom died in August of 2003. After mulling over input from my cousins, I wrote this and read it at her funeral. I found it the other day when I was cleaning out files and wanted to reproduce it here.
I've been asked to speak about Grandmas on behalf of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and it's been very bittersweet recalling the time that I spent with her and the lessons I've learned from her. Because I can't possibly speak for everyone individually, I hope that by sharing some of my personal memories I'll capture some of yours or at least encourage you to take some time to remember. Grandma would really love that.
Grandma's tidy house, like all good grandma's houses, was a treasure chest of goodies and history that she was only too happy to share. Everywhere you turned there was a story, about how to make an apple pie, about her new favorite song (such as "My name's not Lisa, my name is Julie" which I heard many times), or a memory of her beautiful mother Florence. Personally, I liked looking at the pictures of us, her grandchildren, hanging beside the front door in their little octagonal frames. I, of course, looked like an angel draped in a blue towel. I know this because Grandma told me that every time I looked at it. Brandon told me to remind everyone of how Grandma always told him that he was the best looking of her grandchildren. Well Brandon, that may have been true--once. In recent years she heaped a lot of praise on Mayson's "beautiful blue eyes" and dimpled chin and rightly so.
Of course, we had to pose for a lot of pictures. As a result, there were a lot of photo albums and framed pictures in Grandma's house, and looking at them was, ok, well, it was pretty fun! I loved my mom's graduation picture, Becky as a child with her famous golden curls, and the triple exposure photograph of Dave and Joann running through the field as a young married couple. But my favorite pictures were upstairs, in the old family album on the stand between the two rocking chairs. Looking back, it occurs to me that Grandma was always willing to stop everything she was doing--and she always doing some kind of work--to tell me yet again about our history. If the gold standard of grandmothers is someone who endures grubby hands rifling through cherished and valuable family heirlooms and day to day objects that were carefully organized, and seemingly always having the time--and taking obvious joy--in telling every story, then she surpassed that standard. Except for one thing--there was one person that did take precedence over our incredibly important doings at her house, one person that she would have muzzled any of us to hear...Paul Harvey.
During Paul Harvey time, everything stopped, and Grandma trekked into the kitchen, turned up the tabletop radio, and listened to the rest . . . of the story. Sitting semi-quietly, I would help myself to a cookie from the nearby cookie jar, usually a ginger Archway softened by a piece of bread. Oh the mysteries of science that turned those hard cookies soft!
Speaking of food, every grandma is known for some kind of food--even my mother has her gravy! Every time I announced my presence with a slam of the back door, I either reached into the metal cupboard for a club cracker or was offered one, along with the reminder that there was yet another angelic picture of me eating club crackers when I was just a baby. There was always a brown glass bottle in her fridge with water in it, and ice milk--not ice cream--in the freezer. Brandon reminded us of the bag on mini cake donuts that she always had, and it only took her two, maybe three trips to the IGA to remember to buy them! I remember her delicious fried eggs, made in the cast iron skillet that she kept by the stove, and seasoned with generous amounts of salt and pepper from those little square salt and pepper shakers with the big "S" and "P". In college I had a gas stove that had to be lit manually, and every time I struck a match I was instantly transported back into Grandma's kitchen.
The two foods that she is best known for are her apple pies and her Golden Bantam Sweet Corn. Inexplicably, I didn't care for the finished pies, but I loved eating the apple slices from the bowl of cinnamon sugar. And that corn! I watched many times as she removed the kernels and carefully measured them into those little white plastic pints, to be frozen and enjoyed at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I still scrape the corn off the cob, which I know would make Grandma proud.
As I mentioned previously, Grandma kept a very tidy house, which was remarkable considering the amount of stuff that was in it. She would NEVER let food get into her drain, and carefully wiped out dishes, depositing the offending food bits in the wastebasket beneath the sink, not in the one beside the sink, which was labeled for burnables only. Unfortunately, we can't remember what all of Grandma's little labels said--there were so many! Besides the ones on the trash cans, there was one on the back door, one on the telephone table, a sign in the patch of precious dirt beside the back steps that said "Step Over", and the most infamous and mysterious sign of all, the "BEWARE!" sign on the round mirror by the back door.
Grandma and I were pretty tight when I was a kid. How else would you explain her patience with me pawing through her personal effects--the powder puff on her dresser, her signature fragrance--Emeraude--and my favorite of her "good" earrings, a pair of black and white clip-on drops that she wore with a black and white dress.
I loved hanging out in her spooky basement while she did laundry. She always let me clean out the lint filter on the dryer, and I don't know if dryers were different in those days or if she just forgot to do it, but there was always enough lint in that thing to knit a small sweater! Maybe she risked setting her house on fire just so I could clean it out.
In the evening, she, Grandpa and I --and, in later years, her incredibly fat dog, Joe, would sit in our respective seats and watch Hee-Haw and Lawrence Welk. If I got bored I would play "phone" or rummage around in her desk, filling out envelopes with her vast collection of address labels and stickers.
Outside, Grandma let a black widow spider live in the shrub by the hose, and I looked and looked at that thing with awe and proper distance. She had a low row of hedges on the back of the porch that provided hours of jumping fun and a good amount of suspense; after all, they had to be cleared with each mighty leap, or else I risked the deadly bite of the dreaded black widows that resided in them! At dusk, after clearing the hedges for the last time, I would tear off running through the back yards with something really scaring chasing me until I was safely home again.
In the haze of childhood memories, facts can be elusive. A child can easily miss the subtle nuances of a given situation, and logic says that there must have been times when I wore her down, when she stood at her kitchen window and rolled her eyes as I came a-marchin' through her backyard. But I have really thought hard about this in the last few days and, except for one time which I take full teenage rebel responsibility for, I cannot remember her being anything other than genuinely happy and even thrilled to see me. I know that the rest of you can relate to this, as Grandma left no cheek unkissed, no height unmeasured, and no compliment unspoken. No matter how lousy I actually looked, who else would have always greeted me with "Here's my big, tall, beautiful granddaughter!"
We should rejoice that she slipped away as peacefully as she did. Congestive heart failure is anything but funny, but leave it to Mayson's way with words to make everyone laugh. I didn't realize that Mayson had witnessed two of the frightening episodes that led to Grandma being hospitalized. After seeing Grandma leave for the hospital in a critical state, he later showed up in the emergency room only to see her sitting upright, sipping a beverage. He said, "See Grandma? That's what you do--you scare us all half to death and then you're fine."
Well, Grandma, we are fine. We are better for having known you, for bearing witness to your unfailing generosity, cheerfulness, and gentle spirit. We know your story and the strength that hid behind that sweet little old lady facade, and we will not forget what you went through for our parents. Your story will be told and will serve as a reminder to us to always persevere for the sake of our own children.
So thank you, Grandma. Thank you for setting an example, for taking the time, for showing unconditional love. You've touched all of us in so many ways, and in ways that some of us had forgotten for a while. I know that the greatest compliment that each of us could pay you would be to become the kind of parent and grandparent that you were to us. And don't worry--we'll bring extra film.
