My grandmother died in August.  The memorial service will be held for her this weekend, and my mom has asked me to speak.

I could put together something easy, talk about how I’ll miss her, share a few memories, but I feel as someone who conveys my thoughts on “paper” that I should be able to string together something a bit more substantial.

Gram suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last ten years.  In the last few years, she had few words and the only way I could tell she recognized me even remotely was by the way her face lit up a little when I entered the room.

My grandfather passed away when I was only four.  My grandmother was only in her early 50’s–far too young to be a widow.  She had to find work, had a life to continue living.

She wasn’t the traditional grandma.  We did go to her house for dinner every once in awhile.  All the major holidays were celebrated together and she was always with us to celebrate our birthdays, but it was the 70’s and 80’s.  She was going on cruises with her girlfriends.  She was dating.  She got remarried.

Mom and I have discussed it before.  My grandma wasn’t very “grandmotherly” in many ways.  She didn’t play with us, she didn’t demand to see us once a week though she only lived 20 minutes away.  I’ve been used to her being gone from us through Alzheimer’s that her death has been a bit easier, but also because I never thought of her as a central force in my life.

As I think through the words I want to share this weekend though, I realize she was there in so many ways.

There are traditions at Christmas that I’ve continued with my kids that she started for my sister and I (hiding a bag of chocolate coins in the tree for us to find on Christmas day).  I still make her meatballs and spaghetti sauce because that’s what sauce should taste like to me.  She always had extra mashed potatoes for me at Thanksgiving because she knew I could eat my weight in them even when age was in the single digits.  And though she never had very much money, she saved to take my sister and I on our first trip to Disney World and she took me on my first trip overseas–two weeks just the two of us in England and Wales.

My grandmother wasn’t a warm, plump, cookie-baking grandma with a bun.  She always had a cigarette in her hand, more shoes than Imelda Markos and never went without her lipstick, but she loved me in her own way.

And she certainly never really judged.

Don’t get me wrong.  She was very certain about some of her beliefs–no matter how much she contradicted herself, but well…

She went along with Aunt Bev and I when we got our tattoos and even joked with the artist–this behemoth of a man–that she had each one of her wrinkles tattooed on.

She bragged to everyone who’d listen that I had a job in Washington, DC with NARAL while in the same breath telling me how “pro-life” she was.

Or my favorite conversation sitting around my aunt and uncle’s dining room table with her and my mom.  She just blurted out over the table of broken lobster carcasses “Amie, have you ever smoked marijuana?”

I was 25 and felt like it was safe to be honest.  “Yeah grandma, I have.”

She looked me right in the eye and said “you know I used to grow it, right?”

I had no idea what to say.  I looked around the table at her two daughters.  My mom scoffed thinking maybe she was losing her crackers, but my aunt just laughed with a knowing smile.

“Oh yeah!  Remember that great bay window I had in the old house?  It got the best light.  I used to grow it on that windowsill in with all my other plants.”

I saw my grandmother in a completely different way that night.

She was young once.  She had loves (she was growing it for her boyfriend at the time–and I’m not making this up–his name was John Paradise.  He was 5′ 3″ with his platforms on.  He had a big mustache, wore polyester shirts open to his navel with big gold chains).  She didn’t stop living just because my grandfather died.

In reflecting on my grandma, I’m now aware of the tenacity required for her to keep going.  She could have retreated, lived through her grandchildren and no one would have questioned it, but she didn’t.  She didn’t give up.  The woman wore skin-tight satin pants into her 60’s.  And she looked good!

My grandmother gave me the two women who have had the biggest impact on my life–her daughters Bev and my amazing mom Jean–but she gave me so much more too.

I’m grateful I had this opportunity to understand that.

It wasn’t the first time I slept on the main floor at my aunt and uncle’s house.

The house has been the location of family gatherings for long before I was around. My aunt and uncle inherited it from my great-grandfather. We think he bought it from his father. We don’t really know how long it’s been there, that’s just as far back as anyone living knows the story.

It isn’t a big house, though it does have three bedrooms, so when the family gets together–usually at Easter–you sleep wherever you can find space. Since most of my life I have been part of the youngest generation that usually meant I camped on the floor.

Last week, I woke up on the couch after a restless night’s sleep. I needed to get up and start getting ready, but I just lay there taking in the sounds and smells that were both familiar and comforting.

The smell of coffee brewing. The sounds of voices catching up over breakfast. Silverware clinking on dishes. Footsteps padding on the wood floor. No sound is too harsh. Each is round and just a bit muted by the lifetime of possessions that fill the house.

I can taste the Rice Chex and creamy milk that I’m going to eat. There are always Rice Chex in my aunt’s cupboard.

I’ll be greeted by the “adults.” I’ll be called “sleepy head” and I’ll give them the same smile I have since I was teenager (the yep I love to sleep smile).

I know exactly what the next thirty minutes will entail and yet I lay still soaking it all in for just a few minutes more, because I know this is the last time I’ll enjoy the routine.

For after breakfast, we’ll be showering and dressing and getting in the car to head to my aunt’s funeral. This will be the last family gathering in the house. Everyone has moved away–moved on. The house will be sold.

It’s time to get up now, and it’s okay. I will have those sounds and smells in my head forever, and for that I am grateful.

My grandmother has lost most of her words. After watching her cholesterol for years and denying herself her beloved chocolate, it was her mind that went before her body. Alzheimers has robbed my grandmother of her personality, her memory and her words. Despite this, I remember some of them very clearly.

I don’t remember how old I was exactly when we had the conversation, but I couldn’t have been more than five or six. I imagine it must have started by me questioning why she always told me she loved me. I probably wanted to run and play but was delayed by her just wanting a hug. I don’t remember.

However it started, my grandmother told me a story that has stuck with me forever, and I bet that even if she did remember who I was now, she would have no idea how much it’s influenced how I communicate with people I care about.

My grandma was born and raised in Scranton, PA. Her grandfather was a Welshman who came to America to work in the coal mines. At some point after getting married, she moved to Connecticut with her new husband who was soon shipped off to war. She moved back to PA to live with her father, her two, much younger baby brothers and her brand new baby girl–my mom. My grandfather was gone for two years during which time my grandmother ran her father’s house–her mother having died years before. With the war over and my grandfather safely home, she returned to CT and her relationship with her father was conducted over frequent trips home and the phone. She had another little girl, the 60’s came and life was busy. She and my grandfather saved their pennies and built their own house from a plan they bought from a catalogue. Her dad came to visit her in her new house too. I’ve seen pictures of him celebrating there on my mom’s 16th birthday. Not too much time later, back in PA, he died.

My grandmother had spoken to her dad on the phone the day before he died. There had been no indication that he was ill. They were making plans for her to come down soon. She ended the call and told him she’d see him soon. She didn’t tell him she loved him. And I don’t think she’s ever forgotten that–even now.

So years later, when her precocious granddaughter asked her why she always told her she loved her, her response was simple.

The last time I talked to my dad I didn’t tell him I loved him. I didn’t think it would be the last time I talked to him. He died and I didn’t get the chance to tell him. I don’t know if he knew I loved him. I can’t ever let that happen again. You never know when you talk to someone that it may be for the last time.

Last weekend my best friend lost her thirty-eight year-old brother to a complication related to a surgery that occured a month before. He died in the hospital, by himself, in the middle of the night before she and her parents could get to him. The other night, she cried as she lamented the fact that she didn’t get the chance to say goodbye–or to tell him how much she loved him. She worried aloud that he might not have known.

That night as I got ready to pull away, she told me she loved me. And I told her I loved her too.

I was the kid who couldn’t fall asleep at night if I thought my parents were mad at me. I actually threw up once because my mom left for her night shift at the hospital not happy with me for something I’m sure I pulled as she was trying to get to work.

I tell people I love that I love them. I tell my kids all the time. Ask them, they’ll tell you. I say it in cards. I write it in emails. I don’t end a phone conversation with anyone I love without telling them so and making sure they heard me.

I just can’t take the chance that it’s the last conversation I may have with them.

When the diagnosis first comes the emotions can be overwhelming.

When treatment begins a sense of hope begins to flicker.

When treatment begins to fail we say all the words we need to say.

Even though we prepare ourselves, even when we know it’s coming, then end always shocks the system.

This fine gentleman left our world yesterday, but not without leaving a gift for us all in his daughter.

Kris, you and your family are in my thoughts.

I have my own feelings about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those feelings aside, there are brave men and women who are risking and often sacrificing their lives in the name of our country. I might not know each one personally, but it doesn’t matter because those brave souls are someone’s children.

And as a mother, that’s all I need to know.

There is a set of parents who recently lost their son Matt who was serving in Afghanistan. Please visit Jenn’s site where she has created an online sympathy card for them.

I look at the faces of my three young boys, and I pray I will never have to see them off to war. I can’t imagine the strength of the parents who must.

The radio was on in the car as we drove down the driveway, on our way to where I don’t remember anymore. I was in the front passenger seat unable to see over the dashboard of our maroon, two-door Ford LTD. I probably wasn’t wearing a seatbelt not because my mom didn’t care about me but because it was 1977.

My mom brought the car to a stop at the bottom of the driveway before she pulled out to make a left hand turn. That I remember.

The radio was tuned to an AM station, most likely AM1240 out of Waterbury, CT. I remember because we had to change our phone number not long before because it ended in those same four numbers–1-2-4-0. We were forever answering calls for song requests. After a weeks of apologizing to the callers and letting them know they had the wrong number, we just said we’d get the song right on and hang up the phone.

As she nudged the car forward to see beyond the hedges that lined our front lawn, the announcement came through the speakers.

“Elvis Presley is dead.”

Her foot went back on the brake.

“Elvis Pretzel is dead Mom?” I never could get his name right.

“Yeah,” she said, and we were both quiet for a moment–both of us processing the information in our own way. Me contemplating the finality of death; wrapping my seven year-old mind around such a horrific thought; worried that if he could die so too could the person I loved most in the world–the woman sitting next to me. And suddenly I was afraid. He couldn’t be dead! He couldn’t be gone!

“Isn’t there something someone can do?! Can’t they turn back the clock?” I asked. “No,” she said as she explained that if he was dead it was already too late. She was a nurse, and my mother, so I took her at her word letting the information sink in.

I wonder now what she was thinking when she heard the news. Elvis was the icon she grew up with. She had watched him on the Ed Sullivan Show with her family–my grandparents not understanding the draw. The cameras focused in on just his upper body. She watched over the years as he aged. She saw how he had become bloated. She saw too his comeback. But now he was gone.

Was part of her childhood gone too on that day?

Once again she inched the car forward and then turned left down the road. To where, I don’t remember.

It was just a moment in the car, at the end of the driveway, on a warm August day in 1977, but it has stayed with me for thirty years.