In Memory

Pumpkin or pecan? With or without ice cream? Roasts, black-eyed peas, cornbread, pies and apricot preserves. When I think about my grandmother I think about her kitchen and the wonderful things she made there. She was more than just her cooking and baking, however. She was the smiling face who always tried to find something nice to say to me. I always loved going to her house when I was a kid, although for that stage of my life, I don't think I can really separate her from my dear grandfather. I loved to be with them.

Then when I was 10, he was taken from her. I remember how she mourned him. Her mourning was something that I might expect to read about in a novel. It was as though her life had ended with his, and for a long time she ate very little and did very little.

Then she met Bob. He was a blessing to her in that she started to live more fully again. He spent several difficult years with her as she started to lose more and more of her memory. He took care of her with a very rare patience until she had to be put into a nursing home (he passed away while she was there). I missed most of the nursing home time because I moved to New York not long before the stroke that put her there. I am grateful that I do not have many memories of that, as I prefer to remember her as she was when I was younger. She spent the last two years in the nursing home, until yesterday, when Jesus called her home.

She is survived by three sons, four granddaughters and one great-granddaughter.

She was my last grandparent. I never knew my mother's father, as he died many years before I was born. My father's father died in 1991 and my mother's mother in 1999. She was the only one I really got to say good-bye to, however, as the other two grandparents I had known died while on vacation. Knowing that her health was precarious, I visited her each time I was in California with the thought that it might be my last time seeing her. My last good-bye was the sweetest, because that is when Talia was brought to her for the first time. There were four generations together then, one just starting in life, one nearing the end of life and the rest of us somewhere in between.

This is life as we know it in a sinful world: from dust ye came and to dust ye shall return. Even as such, this twisted part of life hurts. We will remember her fondly as a very big part of our lives that we will miss until we see her again in the presence of our Lord.

I love you, Grandmother, and I will miss you!