My grandmother would be 90 today. Unfortunately, she passed a few days shy of this milestone. I attempted to read the following reflections at her memorial service this past week, but couldn’t stay on script or keep it together well enough to honor her as I wanted. Below are the words I wrote soon after learning of her death.
I find it more than a little odd that when someone dies, we instantly reduce the totality of our experience with them to a few candid moments. Flashes of memories sweep across our minds and we hit pause and rewind on various ones as if watching an old VHS tape. I guess we do this same reduction act with every other part of our lives–childhood, school, college, and beyond. Those things don’t feel strange when reduced to a handful of memories. Somehow a life does. It just doesn’t sit well with me; yet it’s exactly what happened when my mom called to tell me my grandmother had passed away. My mind flooded with memory upon memory of the only grandmother I’ve ever had.
As this distillation process occurs, we form a picture of the loved in our mind. One formed not just of their physical appearance, but more importantly the essence of who they were as a person. Where they kind? How about cheerful? What about trustworthy and true? Part of the great distillation process that occurs solidifies all these things into one solid picture of who they were. It is this composition that will come to mind in the days, weeks, and years to come. Every time you hear their name, or something that reminds you of them, it will be this image that will come to mind with all its accompanying emotions.
After I heard the news of my grandmother’s passing, my first thought was of her playing catch with me in the backyard when I was a kid. She was my second mom. We lived with her until I was sixteen, and every day spent in that house was one she made sure I knew that she loved me no matter what. She crawled on the ground, played with action figures, and even played catch in the yard. She never treated me like a grandson. She always treated me like another son.
Maybe that’s how you’re supposed to treat a grandchild. I’ll have to compare when Hannah and I have grandchildren someday. In the meantime, I will always think of my Nana as not only my grandmother, but mom as well.
Part of parenting is dishing out discipline when warranted, and on at least one occasion it fell to Nana to dish it out. She sent me into the yard to cut my own switch–a tradition all young Texans should experience at least once as a right of passage. The mental pain is far worse than the physical ever could be. You stand there debating with yourself which limb to cut, and which would result in your being sent back to try again.
All the times she’d remind me to put on a coat or bundle up going outside also came to mind. She was prone to worry. A quality she held in spades and that I am sad to report rubbed off on me to some degree.
Then there are the things she’d say; “I just don’t know” being my favorite. In fact, it’s the one phrase I’ve forever associated with my grandmother.
She was one of a kind. Immensely kind, full of personality, and tough as they come. A quality I grew to notice and marvel at over the last eight years. She kicked and fought and persevered far beyond what seemed possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought or said that, “They don’t make them like that anymore,” these last many years.
I am so thankful not only that we lived with her my entire childhood, but that I had the tremendous gift of getting to move back in with her in the fall of 2011. She had just fallen and scrapped her leg at the time. I moved in to help her around the house, and keep an eye on her for my mom. We’d eat dinner together; the only time I was sure she was eating. She’d even send me to the store for her beloved cigarettes. It was a sweet time, one I’m sad to say lasted such a brief time. Her leg didn’t improve and you all know the rest of that story.
It’s a hard one to tell, but one full of happiness, strength, and love. No matter how much pain she was in, how awful she felt, or how little oxygen she had, she would light up and smile when she saw you–especially her daughter Valerie. There were hard days, some very hard days, but we won’t remember those days in the end. Those memories will fade in time. What we will hold on to are the overabundance of good and happy memories we each have of her. “The one’s that love us; never really leave us. Do they?” They’re always in our hearts. They’re always in our minds. They’re always in us. They continue to shape and guide us long after they’re gone.