I'd Be Running Up That Road, Be Running Up That Hill. . . .

While napping yesterday afternoon, I dreamed that while talking with Mom in her kitchen, I mentioned missing being able to write letters to Grammy and how I always ache when I see pink things in the stores that look like something she'd love.  "You can write to her or send her anything you want," Mom responded, clearly puzzled.  "She loves hearing from you." It didn't feel at all like a dream, our interaction and the setting were so realistic.  I goggled at her a few moments before telling her I didn't understand.  What was wrong with Mom neurologically now, I wondered, just as I would in real life, that she didn't remember that her own mother has died?  She looked back at me with what was probably an expression identical to mine until I finally explained, "Mom--Grammy died.  Or. . .I thought she died. . . ?"  She looked both pained to hear me say that and relieved to understand finally why I had been so baffled.  I spelled out for her that I had thought--wrongly, it was turning out--that Grammy had died last January, we had all gone to her service in New York, and I had even spoken at it.  I told her I could share more details but that I didn't want to hurt her.  She said, sounding just how she would in real life, that it hurt her more to find out that I had thought Grammy had been gone going on two years and that I hadn't been in touch with her in all that time.  None of it even happened, I realized, a thrill of horror and gratitude sweeping over me:  Grammy is still alive!  Sommer's cousin isn't on a ventilator post-Covid!  Stuffed is still here with us!  Mikes' mom didn't have a stroke!  It was all a dream!  All the other losses of 2020 and 2021 were just bad dreams!  I started to cry from the incredible relief of it, and I woke up then for real, and really in tears.  Mom called a couple hours later to tell me that one of my cousins has a brain tumor.  January 2020-onward:  And so it goes. 

I pray and rest and appreciate beauty and keep in touch and listen to music and walk and work and cook good food and try to write and try to read, but life has felt more rough-patch-ish than not for so very long now--and for so many of us.  I told Mike the other day that although I don't feel like I can focus enough to write very well the past couple years and can't concentrate long enough to read as voraciously as I did before either, I need to keep trying.  It will be creativity that saves me this time, just as it has so many times before.  Bear with me, then, as I try to find the words to tell the stories.  It's been a long hard slog that has almost muted me, but I will keep trying.  

I will keep trying. 

Winter 2021

Winter drags on with more storms called for this week, but it finds me having received both doses of the vaccine and having visited family twice, so my gratitude outweighs my eagerness for spring.  We are all getting each other through it--did you see the sweet love note Monique's grandchildren left her and her husband in the snow?!  ♥--and while a number of people in the family have been sick from Covid (my nephew, three aunts, one uncle, and three cousins, at last count) this past year, we are still here as we look forward to the next season together, so how can we complain, really.  May spring come soon, though, if I may say so, and may it bring healing for us all. 

With Gingham and Gratitude

A few hours after I wrote that last post, my grandmother fell and struck her head and has since passed away, the last of my grandparents and the one who has always been too big for me to be able to write about.  Dear Grammy.  ♥

Unresponsive after the fall, Grammy survived more than another week, while the rest of us waited and wondered if today would be The Day.  Yes, we were told, it will be today, then today would become tomorrow, and Grammy was still with us, but no, now they say certainly sometime tonight, but then a new day would dawn, and now they're sure it will be in the wee hours of the morning, but no, another night and day would pass.  'So touch-and-go, but I took quite a gamble and ordered a teddy bear one afternoon for next-day delivery to the hospital.  My uncle opened the box and quickly placed the bear into her arms, my family texted me, and my aunt rubbed its fur against Gram so she could feel how soft it was.  Grammy passed just a few hours later. 

Just as I felt when Sommer died and when my paternal grandfather died, I remain shocked that such a big personality could somehow no longer be here with us.  Surely, someone larger than life is larger than death too?  Some part of the heart will never understand.

I began writing what would become a eulogy on New Year's Eve--such were the holidays this year--and I was determined from the start to read it at her service, shyness be damned.  And last week, standing in front of everyone at the funeral home wearing a pink gingham skirt Grammy would have raced me across the store in her walker to beat me to, I did just that, my voice only breaking on the very last word.  I was nauseous with dread while waiting for the pastor, my uncle, and my aunt to finish speaking, but as soon as I began walking to the podium, I felt a calm come over me and I knew I'd be okay.  I'm prouder of the fact that I not only managed to do this, but also that I did it well--I received many compliments on both my writing and my delivery--than of anything else I've done so far in my life; it means that much to me and was that hard for me to do.  And Grammy would have understood that and would have been pumping her fists in the air for her quiet granddaughter with every finished sentence and section from me, I know.

This is what I said:

When someone close to me died years ago, Grammy told me, "Write!  Write!  It will help ease the pain of the loss."   I've been taking her advice the past couple weeks, and this is some of what I've written so far. 

My earliest memory is actually of Grammy.  She is in the kitchen with me asking me if I'm excited about turning four.  I've always loved that my first memory is of a grandparent--and of a grandparent asking if I'm excited about something. . .what a celebratory note to begin on, you know?  :)  And how apt that it was Grammy asking me if I was excited, because we all know that Grammy could make things exciting--for better or worse, right?!  :)  Excitement to me as a four-year-old with Grammy meant that when she helped Mom make my breakfast, she'd slice my toast on the diagonal and call it "party toast."  We both liked Nabisco Nilla Wafers and would eat them together.  She made a brown velvet coat and hat set for one of my dolls, and she made a beige shawl for one too.  I still have all the clothes.  

Well, I turned four in the spring of 1981, and as many of you here remember, those were the days of the big family badminton tournaments in my parents' yard.   Grammy loved to tell the story of how during one especially spirited game, she landed badly and broke her ankle, and as my dad and various relatives made a little "arm chair" and carried her off the court--"the court!"  :)--my Italian great-grandmother who lived next door to us at the time muttered as Gram was carried past, "Crazy woman!!"  :)  Grammy loved that story; she thought it was a hoot and told the story with pride.  "Crazy woman!"  :) 

I once showed her a Peanuts cartoon I had clipped from the newspaper.  It depicted Charlie Brown in bed with thought balloons all around him, and the thought balloons were a repeated image of the little red-haired girl--his long-time crush, you know--asking HIM to dance.  The word balloon above Charlie Brown's head read, "Sometimes it's nice just to lie in bed at night and remember something good that's happened to you."  Grammy loved that.  "Oh, VAL!  Isn't that WONDERFUL!"  She loved it.  I think of Grammy and all my grandparents as some of the "something goods" in my own life, but Grammy was one of a kind.  I remember telling my best friend in high school that I couldn't really describe Grammy--She'd just have to meet her.  Grammy was too big to put into words, really, but here are a few I've come up with so far, just bullet points of things about her that make me happy or that instantly say "Grammy" to me:

•  hats, overalls, scarves, denim, and the colors beige, tan, pink, gray, and olive green
• pink legal pad paper
• pink Geraniums
• gifts wrapped in white tissue paper--I never saw Grammy use wrapping paper; It was always white tissue, and her gifts were beautiful.
• her spindly handwriting
• raspberry squares
• chocolate brownies with black walnuts
• baked beans at family picnics
• the smell of strong coffee
• Rod Stewart's song "Forever Young"--because Grammy told me once that a friend of hers once told her that every time he heard it, he thought of her.  Every time I've heard it since she told me that, I've thought of her too.
• the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"--because Mom's always said it was one of Grammy's favorite songs
• Grammy liked pretty things, and especially pretty pink things:  Pink lemonade, pink hard candy, and even pink salad dressing.  I remember one visit as a kid. . .seeing a glass jar on her counter with pale pink watermelon candy in it and thinking, "Wow!  How great to be an adult!  You even get to have pink CANDY!"  It was enchanting to me.  And then I found raspberry vinaigrette dressing in her fridge, pale pink dressing in a bottle, and asked her, "Do you even LIKE all these flavors, or do you just like having pink groceries?!"  :)  (Gram assured me she really liked them all.)  :)  
• She liked Winnie the Pooh.  And like Pooh, when she got hungry, she was known to say, "'Time to get a little smackerel of somethin.'"  
• And finally, in a story I almost can't believe I'm going to share in front of the Reverend. . .Jim Palmer, the hunky baseball player from the 70s and 80s--He used to do ads for Jockey underwear.  As he got older, he did endorsements for mortgages and home equity blah-blah--drier things, right--and one day when one of the more boring Jim Palmer commercials came on TV, Grammy shocked my teenage self by saying, "I like ya a lot, Jim Palmer.  But I like ya a lot better when you're in your underwear!"  :)  She was one of a kind.

My best friend in high school didn't get to meet Grammy.  She died a few months before our high school graduation.   Grammy sent me a card a few days after she learned of Sommer's death--and many of you know how perfect Grammy's cards always were.  She had the knack of finding the PERFECT card with the PERFECT illustration and the PERFECT verse, and this one was no different.  The outside showed a dark-haired girl in a dress, tights, and black Mary Jane shoes with her head bowed, and it read:  "Endure.  Keep yourself for days of happiness."  I'm actually going to wrap up what I want to say here today by sharing with you what Grammy wrote to me inside the card.  I thought of it over New Year's and dug it out, knowing it would be as perfect now as it was back then.  In Grammy's words, then:

"Dear, dear Val--

How I ache for you today, I can think of little else.  Looked so forward to meeting Sommer.  Life is so hard and it's okay to yell, 'It's not fair.'

You know, Val, Nana used to say, 'Just be happy for that part of your life and what this person brought into your life--and you into hers.'  I understand you can't handle the memories now.  Guess I've never understood how a loving God could cause so much heartache and I personally have questioned him many times!

Just remember that every person in the world is a dream of God.  Life is a gift, day in and day out.  There is a quote I like from Golda Meir:  'Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.'  

Remember that I love you beyond all reason.

Gram."

A fellow granddaughter sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" a cappella to conclude Grammy's funeral.  Unbeknownst to me, she had told her mom the week before that she was going to sing it, and sometime soon after she did, I texted her mom to ask if my cousin would be willing and able to sing, and I suggested "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  My aunt loved that her daughter had came up with it on her own.  My cousin sang beautifully.  She is a local theater director, so her talent and composure were not surprising, but I think we all were remembering as we watched her how she used to put on pretend concerts on Grammy's front porch as a six-year-old, with Grammy's honey dipper as a microphone.  Just as I had held it together until my voice broke on my last word, she got through the song perfectly but then collapsed into sobs in her mom's arms as soon as she stepped away from the podium.  But we did it.  She and I were also the only ones who decided to wear pink gingham to the service--Grammy also loved pink gingham--so when we first saw each other's outfits, we laughed in surprise and delight.  'So wondrous how these little things align.  "Mom would be so proud of her gingham girls," my mom told us before we left the funeral home.  And she truly would.  I'm sure she IS.  ♥ 

Aunt Laurie and I were roommates at the hotel last week, and before we went to bed the night of the funeral, I sat at the desk writing in my journal while she finished packing her luggage for the return trip home.  One of the things that crossed my mind was that I hadn't seen a heart that day.  I had really thought I would.  I'd found a heart on the floor at work the week before,

had found one reflected in a stack of clean dishes I had put away before heading home for the funeral trip, 

and I had spotted another--a breadcrumb heart--on my plate at the family supper just the evening before,

but none of them were really the best heart, you know, and I was just surprised there hadn't been a more obvious one that day.  I didn't say anything about it, it was just one of a million things on my mind, and soon, I too was getting ready to climb into bed.  As Aunt Laurie folded up her coat to place it on the top of her now-tidy stack of luggage, she pulled something out of one of its pockets and laughed.  "I never know what I'll find in my pockets," she said and walked over to me holding out the whatever-it-was.  "I have no idea where this came from, but you can have it, Valerie."  And into my hand--chills!--she slipped a folded white paper heart.  

I went to bed having been given my heart after all, then--!--and hours later was in the car again heading home--with my pink gingham skirt packed away and Grammy's new bear now tucked in beside me. 

"When you finally fly away," Rod Stewart sings, "I'll be hoping that I served you well."  And Grammy has, and I think I did.   And I am, indeed, grateful for it all.  

Gone from My Sight

My maternal grandfather died this weekend, and the fourth of July holiday-weekend is an appropriate send-off for this Navy veteran, I find myself thinking.  When I once described her dad as "a character," my mom agreed and noted, "Both your grandfathers are characters."  And now both are gone, and I can't come up with the words quite yet to express how jarring that feels.  . . My time as someone's grandkid also passing away.  My grandfather would have turned ninety next month.  This is my ever-present-Yankees-cap grandfather.  The grandfather with the most beautiful, looped, delicate script-handwriting.  The grandfather who's always somehow reminded me of Elton John.  :)  The grandfather who would embarrass my grandmother by loudly and realistically neighing like a horse in the middle of Target to get her attention while she shopped.  :)  The grandfather who would add big-nosed "Kilroy was here"-style drawings to the backs of his letters' envelopes for me.  ♥  

A strict Baptist who had been raised on a large dairy farm, he never cursed; A man he encountered at work one day so angered him, he felt enraged enough to let some baaaaad words fly finally, the story goes, but all my grandfather managed to spit out was, "You--you--you applehead!"   He was always the first to laugh at himself, and no one has ever described him without using some variant of silly, goofball, or ham to do so.  During an Easter 2001 visit, he stood at my mom's side at the kitchen table late at night as she blearily tried to think of a final few rhyming clues for the next morning's egg-hunt before going to bed, and we were soon dissolving in giggles as his suggestions got sillier and sillier.  "How 'bout this, Chris?" he would begin--and she would cry out, "Stop!" and be laughing already before he even continued--"Your next prize might be under the tree.  If it is chocolate, leave it there for me!"  And as we all grew more tired and punchy, his helpful rhymes included gems along the lines of, "You think there's treasure in this yard?  Well, there's not, Kid.  Life is HARD!"  :) 

He served eight years in the Navy and was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp.  I'm hoping one of my aunts or uncles remembers to bring his official Navy portrait to the services this week so I can finally see it and take a picture of it.  He looks "just gorgeous" in it, in Aunt Laurie's words, so young and blue-eyed.  (Update:  They remembered.  ↓  ♥)

My grandmother remains, after having had him in her life more than sixty years.  She herself turned ninety this year.  The week ahead for all of us--Mom and Aunt Laurie have three brothers and two other sisters, there are more than twenty grandchildren, and now so many great-grandchildren too--will be heartbreaking.  Aunt Laurie, Mom, and I fondly remember Grammy's shock when my no-dancing-permitted grandfather led her out onto the dance floor at my older brother's wedding.  Life has its sweet surprises too, after all. 

Everyone's stories of  my grandfather are funny and endearing ones, told and retold.  One of Mom's favorites is of how during a family camping trip as a kid, she woke in the middle of the night to the whoops and hollers of my grandfather running around outside the tent chasing raccoons away from the family's food-stash in his underwear.  :) 

Decades later, upon first meeting my dad's Italian-born grandmother, who lived next door to us when I was little, he kindly accepted the glass of homemade wine she offered him since he did not know how to refuse her politely, especially since Great-Grandma spoke no English.  With the intention of getting it over with quickly, he downed the glass and smiled his "thanks" at Great-Grandma, but she misinterpreted his quick drinking and pleasant smile as a sign that he was a big drinker and would like more, so she refilled his glass--and refilled it--and refilled it yet again--and my sweet grandfather ended up near-drunk for the first time in his life (and smiling all the more the longer this went on, of course) before she finally understood that he really had had enough.  :)  That story is still my favorite.  Mom always loved to tease him about it, and he would laugh harder than anybody when she did.  ♥

He loved children and could always be found at reunions and get-togethers wherever they were gathered, much preferring playing like a kid to visiting over coffee with the rest of the adults. "Well, he IS just a big kid," one of my aunts has always added whenever this has been brought up. 

Last year, my uncle Dan arranged for my grandfather to be gifted with an honor flight--Bless!--and accompanied him to Washington, D.C. where he was recognized for his military service.

It is one photo from that trip that keeps making me cry this weekend--one of my always-sweet but almost-always-smiling grandfather standing tall to offer a crisp and quite solemn salute.  

For whatever reason, the salute--just like the homemade pies after my other grandfather died--is what keeps breaking me this weekend.  It comes to mind and I dissolve again.  We're talking about my grandfather, though--he of the applehead-curse and Kilroy drawings--so not to worry:  There is always a reason to smile again soon enough.

♥