I could fill a book with what I know about my grandma and my life with her or her life with me. She wrote in her journals almost every day that I knew her. I put a picture of my mom and me – a picture from that July, from my birthday, our first one together again in almost twenty years – in there with her.īut when I think of her, when I try to drum up an image of her, this is what I come up with: I see her standing in her garden with a dishtowel on her head in the morning summer sunlight weeding with a hand over her eyes and a hand on her hip. I stood there with my mom in front of me and Kenny behind me. But when you lose someone you loved, who you respected and looked up to, it just plain old-fashioned sucks.Īnd standing by her casket before they closed the lid and wheeled her away from me for the last time was almost more than I could do, too. I can’t hardly ever hear that song these days without switching the station, fast-forwarding though, because it’s almost too much.
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I was sitting with my head facing the ceiling, bottom lip tucked in and chin wobbling. Kenny, bless his heart, was sitting with the other pall bearers and he said he looked over at me during that moment. I found out later that my Uncle Tom had heard that song on his way up to the hospital. The lilting beginning of the violin and then Josh Groban’s angelic voice sang. I had heard it on Oprah’s birthday special or something and of course it made me think of my grandparents. I had marched through the whole of the visitation and people’s hands and their words about her. I remember sitting there at the funeral with my mom on one side of grandpa and me on the other. I don’t think I’ve heard that word in years and I miss it. She said ‘Toodle’ when you were leaving the house.
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She married my grandpa and had four children and fought for my Aunt Mary (who was born with PKU and wasn’t diagnosed for some time after that) tooth and nail to have a good life. She grew up during the Depression where nothing was to be had ever. She also told me once that I was one of the strongest people she had ever met. That woman could get to the heart of something faster than anyone I’d ever met and succinctly. It drove me nuts when she whistled under her breath and didn’t know she was doing it. I loved arguing with her for the sheer enjoyment of revving her engine. I never thought I’d be able to survive losing her. You all know how that goes, right? You lose someone you love, someone who has defined your very being, and you crumble or shut down for a bit, right? I don’t remember what I thought in that moment other than I was changing Sadie’s diaper and that I just said okay, okay, and told him I’d be down in a little bit. My grandpa called around seven to say that grandma had passed away at 5:15 that morning. I was thinking of calling in sick that day for some reason if nothing more than a mental health day. I woke up around five that morning (it was a Monday) and couldn’t go back to sleep. I couldn’t sleep that night practically at all. I kissed her three times on the forehead (don’t ask me about three’s…I have a thing) and told her to be good. Stopping into the ER, we checked on her, and helped her pick out pictures for her room at the nursing home of Sadie that had been taken recently. Tara and I were visiting the Big City to go school shopping. (I imagine she has a hand in this entry, these words, from where she’s sitting with her sisters and brother in Heaven and watching) My grandma has been gone eight years tomorrow.
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I’m surrounded by needs, wants, and gotta have’s every single day, but every once in awhile during these days – these dog days of Summer – I feel something bigger than me. Have a dream late on a Saturday night/Early Sunday morning and you wake up aching to talk to that person one more time? Do you feel that loving hand on your shoulder and knowing that person is no longer taking steps on this Earth?