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My Granny Passed Away Today
Mar. 30th, 2009 07:04 pmMy Granny passed away this morning at the age of 91. I had been meaning to write a post about her for quite some time, entitled the Bead Lady. Complete with pictures, I thought I had saved onto my computer - but when I went to look I found they were gone, mysteriously erased. And now, I find myself looking at the screen, and I am not sure I even have the words.
I look at the blanket I had begun knitting her, a marroon and gold, with threads of purple, a not even half woven place mate to go over her lap...and while I could, I suppose finish it to give to someone else, I find myself wanting to leave it, unfinished.
What should I tell you?
That she learned to bead necklaces from a Papago Woman, as well as the Navajo, then in later years taught their children when they visited with her in Y, Arizona, and Uma, where she traveled first with her husband then with her daughter every winter for about fifteen years. Or that the desert was her second home, she loved it there, the dry air that didn't make her hurt, and arid vegetation. And the Western novels from Louis L'Amour to Tony Hillerman that sat in stacks around her chair.
Or, that she read voraciously, finishing a book each day. She read Gone With the Wind in less than thirteen hours, a deft feat, considering its length.
Or that she was a budding artist, not to mention, untrained architect, having drawn the blueprints for a dock. She designed her own beaded necklaces, necklaces that go for thousands of dollars in New York, but a mere $600 in the West. One necklace was a little bag with two Indians on horseback riding against a brilliant red and orange sunset, all beaded with tiny white, black, blue, purple, orange, red, and yellow beds. She'd done it with arithitis bending crooking her fingers and swelling her toes.
Or that when my parents went to Australia for a year and a half after I graduated from undergrad, and my friends scattered, we, my Granny and I, comforted each other. Her husband dead and buried. Her eldest sister, Gwen, gone as well. Each weekend I drove the hour and forty minutes to her house in Liberty, Missouri, and we would rent movies, eat at Applebee's and pick up a French Silk pie.
One night I remember calling her, it must have been past midnight, but I knew she'd be up, she always was back then, frightened of a monster spider in my bathroom. She calmed me down.
Or when I took her to the doctor, saw the arthritis scattered across her back and shoulders, and legs, then to cheer ourselves up we went to Dances With Wolves - and had a ball.
Between 1991-1994, I called my Granny almost every day. After 9/11, that Friday, when I finally fell apart, a crying, sobbing heap, she was the only person I could get a hold of, and she calmed me down. My parents were a world and a half away in Greece at the time.
Then, later, in 2006, when I got robbed, I called her. Numerous times. She calmed me down. Much as she had with the spider.
Or should I tell you how she helped a family come together? Find one another after years apart, discover their roots, and obtain an in heritance that enabled them to afford a seeing eyed dog for their brother? That story sits in the back of my brain, screaming to be written, but for some reason I simply can't find the words.
Like tonight. After months, of meaning to write an ode to my granny, all I seem to find are broken sentences and jumbled thoughts, a babble.
She had a high tolerance for pain. And when she was in her right mind, before the Alztheimers or dementia took over, she never whined, rarely complained. She hated asking for help, and did not want to impose. When I passed the bar exam - she was the first person I told, just as she was the first I'd told when I got into law school. And she used to give the greatest hugs, I'll always remember those hugs.
50 years older than me. She had over time become much more than just my Granny, she had become one of my best friends, and I've been missing her for quite some time now. I knew, somehow, this past Xmas, when I saw her - that it would be the last time. And it was. She died in her sleep, with no pain, or so I'm told. Her heart finally gave out.
For the last year and a half she has been asking to go home. That was all she wanted. And now, finally, she has gone home. Home to her husband, her daughter, her sisters, and her parents. Home.
And I realize the person I am grieving is not the woman who died today, but the woman who I lost more than a year ago. I know that. Yet, as much as I am relieved she has passed...finally passed, I feel her loss all the more. My Granny. My Granny. I loved her so.
And now...she's gone away home, where I can't see or talk to her no more.
I look at the blanket I had begun knitting her, a marroon and gold, with threads of purple, a not even half woven place mate to go over her lap...and while I could, I suppose finish it to give to someone else, I find myself wanting to leave it, unfinished.
What should I tell you?
That she learned to bead necklaces from a Papago Woman, as well as the Navajo, then in later years taught their children when they visited with her in Y, Arizona, and Uma, where she traveled first with her husband then with her daughter every winter for about fifteen years. Or that the desert was her second home, she loved it there, the dry air that didn't make her hurt, and arid vegetation. And the Western novels from Louis L'Amour to Tony Hillerman that sat in stacks around her chair.
Or, that she read voraciously, finishing a book each day. She read Gone With the Wind in less than thirteen hours, a deft feat, considering its length.
Or that she was a budding artist, not to mention, untrained architect, having drawn the blueprints for a dock. She designed her own beaded necklaces, necklaces that go for thousands of dollars in New York, but a mere $600 in the West. One necklace was a little bag with two Indians on horseback riding against a brilliant red and orange sunset, all beaded with tiny white, black, blue, purple, orange, red, and yellow beds. She'd done it with arithitis bending crooking her fingers and swelling her toes.
Or that when my parents went to Australia for a year and a half after I graduated from undergrad, and my friends scattered, we, my Granny and I, comforted each other. Her husband dead and buried. Her eldest sister, Gwen, gone as well. Each weekend I drove the hour and forty minutes to her house in Liberty, Missouri, and we would rent movies, eat at Applebee's and pick up a French Silk pie.
One night I remember calling her, it must have been past midnight, but I knew she'd be up, she always was back then, frightened of a monster spider in my bathroom. She calmed me down.
Or when I took her to the doctor, saw the arthritis scattered across her back and shoulders, and legs, then to cheer ourselves up we went to Dances With Wolves - and had a ball.
Between 1991-1994, I called my Granny almost every day. After 9/11, that Friday, when I finally fell apart, a crying, sobbing heap, she was the only person I could get a hold of, and she calmed me down. My parents were a world and a half away in Greece at the time.
Then, later, in 2006, when I got robbed, I called her. Numerous times. She calmed me down. Much as she had with the spider.
Or should I tell you how she helped a family come together? Find one another after years apart, discover their roots, and obtain an in heritance that enabled them to afford a seeing eyed dog for their brother? That story sits in the back of my brain, screaming to be written, but for some reason I simply can't find the words.
Like tonight. After months, of meaning to write an ode to my granny, all I seem to find are broken sentences and jumbled thoughts, a babble.
She had a high tolerance for pain. And when she was in her right mind, before the Alztheimers or dementia took over, she never whined, rarely complained. She hated asking for help, and did not want to impose. When I passed the bar exam - she was the first person I told, just as she was the first I'd told when I got into law school. And she used to give the greatest hugs, I'll always remember those hugs.
50 years older than me. She had over time become much more than just my Granny, she had become one of my best friends, and I've been missing her for quite some time now. I knew, somehow, this past Xmas, when I saw her - that it would be the last time. And it was. She died in her sleep, with no pain, or so I'm told. Her heart finally gave out.
For the last year and a half she has been asking to go home. That was all she wanted. And now, finally, she has gone home. Home to her husband, her daughter, her sisters, and her parents. Home.
And I realize the person I am grieving is not the woman who died today, but the woman who I lost more than a year ago. I know that. Yet, as much as I am relieved she has passed...finally passed, I feel her loss all the more. My Granny. My Granny. I loved her so.
And now...she's gone away home, where I can't see or talk to her no more.
