Memento mori

So yeah, that Somber Post. Or, "Why We are Very, Very Happy That We Visited Illinois on Easter Weekend."

Wednesday, March 26. The phone rang at 11:00 at night, and I woke up just as it finished ringing. I noted that the number was that of my mother's cell phone, and hit redial; she and my dad had gone on an overnight trip, so I couldn't imagine her calling so late unless there was a reason.

Boy, was there ever. My grandmother (my father's mother) had died. They weren't clear on the details yet, but by all accounts it had been fast. Probably her aneurysm, discovered by her doctor several years ago, had burst.

When I was growing up, listening to my grandmother was better than reading Nancy Drew and Little House on the Prairie put together. I loved to hear her talk about what it was like growing up as the only girl in a household with seven (yes, seven) brothers, how she would help her mother with everything, and how she and her mother would embroider yards and yards of the household linens every spring. And how her brothers took care of her, and were protective of her. They even picked her name; her mother, wanting an uncommon name for her daughter, sent her older sons out into the neighborhood to take a survey of girls' names and find something pretty that wasn't too common. They did. They also helped persuade their mother to let my grandmother buy her first grown-up (read: black) dress, when she was 16. (I remember her telling me that her argument was it wasn't really ALL black, it had a shiny multicolored rose at the belted waist, but that hadn't mattered to her mother until her brothers joined the discussion.) Her favorite brother, just two years older, took her out on the town for her eighteenth birthday. He also helped her buy a typewriter, so the two of them could practice at home and get good office jobs. (They did; in fact, this brother was the first man in the family to wear a white shirt to work, during a time when the distinction between white-collar and blue-collar jobs was literal.) She was a dedicated folk dancer, and also loved to go out dancing with her three best girlfriends every Friday night.

When we went cottaging up north (Wisconsin-ese for renting a cottage in the northern part of the state for a week or so during summer vacation), she would spend hours playing games with me and my cousin. We played lots of card games (our favorite was Royal Rummy), lots of Yahtzee, and plenty of Scrabble too. (She had a special Scrabble cheat sheet, composed of unusual two-, three-, and four-letter words, for the times when random, unrelated letters were sitting on your tile holder and you needed a really short word.) She also outfitted all of our Barbie and Cabbage Patch dolls in nicely crocheted creations, some of which are probably still in my parents' attic. And, when we took it into our heads to give impromptu singing and dancing performances, which we often did, she made us feel like we were the greatest. (We weren't.)

I sat there for an hour and a half remembering all of the above and more, until Dragon came to suggest I get some rest.

The next few days were a flurry of phone calls and visits, punctuated only by a baking frenzy (mine; I decided to bake a batch of my dad's favorite cookies, to be set aside for his own personal use, and then decided that baking made me feel useful, so I also baked two types of chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and two batches of Rice Krispie treats, and was about to start in on some cookie bars when I ran out of vanilla. And steam*).

Her funeral was the Monday after. Despite its pretty pink and white embroidered lining, it was hard to reconcile the coffin with my grandmother, who'd so recently been smiling as Boy Wonder colored at her kitchen table and Action Hero ate approximately half a carton of vanilla ice cream at same.

So I'll remember her that way. Smiling at me and my cousins. Staying up late with me and telling me stories; playing cards at her kitchen table or at the table of a rented cabin; holding a Baby Boy Wonder and then an Action Hero in her lap and smiling at her great-grandchildren.

*After the funeral luncheon, I said, "I sort of don't know what to do now." Dragon said, "PLEASE don't bake anything else, okay?"