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.

I had a 13″ color television, a queen-sized bed and my own room in a Washington, DC townhouse on Capitol Hill that I shared with two hill staffers. We had a one year-old dog, jobs that provided health insurance, covered rent and groceries and bought us a few beers a week.

We were 24.

For some odd reason, I sat on the floor alone in my room that night in September to watch the pilot of this new hospital drama I had heard about.

It was early September a few years earlier when I discovered the fever and odd swelling on the right side of my face and neck was mumps.

“Mumps?! Who gets mumps?”

The infirmary wanted to quarantine me. I insisted that I lived off campus and agreed to refrain from kissing young, virile boys until I was no longer contagious, so they let me recuperate at home (where I secretly made a list of boys who deserved to be kissed by a mump-afflicted girl).

When I was a kid my mom was an ER nurse. This meant that she performed our throat cultures herself at home using what felt like a wooden spoon with a nerf basketball on the end. It also meant that when we needed a booster vaccination she might bring us by the ER for a quick stab on our way to the mall or the grocery store or my grandma’s–or sometimes not.

My vaccination records from my elementary school days are a bit sketchy.

That’s what we figured when, as a 20 year-old, I developed what looked in the mirror like a mild case of elephantiasis.

(As a complete aside, this post was going in an entirely different direction when I started it and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able bring it all around again. Trust me. My original concept was brilliant.)

So despite my mom’s home diagnoses and drive-by vaccinations, she had some experience in an ER. (Like on those Christmas Days we sat and stared at the presents under the tree waiting for her to get off of her 7-3 p.m. shift. Torture to a seven year-old I tell you.) And THAT’s why I called her the morning after the ER pilot to see what she thought.

“The medicine is a bit overly dramatic, but the show comes closest to any I’ve seen in capturing the drastic swings in activity in an ER. You can be sitting there one minute reorganizing the ace bandages and the next minute up to your elbows in drunks and motorcycle accident victims.”

Yeah, I can eat through any conversation.

I liked the show too. I watched it regularly for the first seven seasons or so, took a little break and then thank the heavens for the miracle of TiVO was able to follow it every week again for the past five years.

Today, I don’t have a room of my own. I do however have a 52″ TV, a queen-sized bed and own a house in the suburbs with my husband. We share it with three wild boys and an almost one year-old dog. We have jobs that provide health insurance, cover the mortgage and groceries and buy us a few beers a week–or so it feels in this economy.

I’m 39.

Tonight, I sat in the family room with my two youngest sons constantly asking them to keep it down and rewinding the DVR trying to watch the series finale of ER.

The change in Noah Wyle is what struck me the most maybe because we’re almost the same age. The 15 years since the pilot have created for him more depth in a way that makes his face more interesting to me now than when he was playing that young intern.

Those same 15 years have given my life depth that I never could have imagined sitting on the floor alone in my room that night in September.

Did you know how much I adored you?

Did you know that all these years later I can remember specific moments we spent together as clearly as the crisp days they occurred.

Maybe the memories seem clearer than they are because I have photos tucked away in an album. There I am looking at you with a big smile. Or there’s the one where we’re playing not realizing we’re being photographed.

*sigh*

I had such a thing for older men then.

Or was it your twin brother Richard. It was always hard to tell you apart. Who knows. I was only five.

This memory is brought to you thanks to my friend Jennifer who was remember her own Robert today.

Children, this is your mother.

You may have found my blog.

You may think this is your ticket to throwing my past in my face to exonerate you from all laws that apply to you, but you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.

You see your mother was a well-behaved teenager, she never did drugs, she never had sex, she never snuck out of the house, she never drove before she got her license and she especially never wore horrible fashions or thought big hair was hot.

NEVER.

And this is all true because it is in writing–here on my blog.

Now step away from the computer and go get mommy some of her special juice–and don’t forget the lime.

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This week’s Friday Flashback asked What did you do (or not do) at your prom. Not wanting to tarnish my pristine reputation, I stand behind the words above and will also swear that my marriage is perfect, my children always behave, my house is always clean and I’m really happy with my current weight.

Check out these other fine friends who are participating as well.

Mrs. Flinger
Oh, The Joys
Mamalogues
Julie

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.

Driving along on my way to work this morning I was daydreaming and thinking about Florida. The weather was grey and chilly and I was imagining the warm touch of the sun on my skin.

I know I moved away from my home town as soon as I could, but there’s still a soft spot in my heart for a few things St. Pete.

Anyway, you know how you get in the zone when you’re driving a route you travel often? I had just gotten on the highway when all of the sudden I noticed that I was surrounded by white cars. Of course, white cars make me think of Florida. They always jumpt out of me when I’m home for a visit. White just doesn’t seem to be the color of choice for drivers here in the mid-Atlantic states. So when I all of the sudden felt like a golden chariot riding through white puffy clouds, I took note.

Then the car behind me on the left pulled up in front of me. And where was the license plate from? You got it–Florida.

I love starting my day with a chuckle.

You grabbed my hand to hold it and all felt right with the world. My stomach was doing flip flops. I was doing everything I could to prevent my teeth from chattering–that happens when I’m nervous. And, I was left speechless.

Me. Speechless.

I had waited for that moment, contemplated that moment, pictured that moment in my head for weeks and here it was. All I wanted to do was drink it in. I let you talk. I let you lead the way. My heart is pounding just thinking about it all now–all this time later. The world was going on around us traffic signals turning red then green, the sun lowering itself in the late afternoon and the only thing I could feel was your hand on mine. The only thing in my focus was how you kept squeezing my hand as if to make sure I was really there.

And I was there. I was there in that moment drinking in every detail behind my dark sunglasses. I felt safe behind them. They served as my last vestige of protection before you had me wholly. I knew once I let you see my eyes I could never hide anything from you again.

And so it was.

It was a beautiful day here that day. All the descriptions you’ve read of the bright blue sky and crisp air are true. It wasn’t a day you’d expect such horror, but when would you?

I wasn’t going to write about the events of this day six years ago, because I wrestle with many of the actions that have been taken since in the name of that ghastly day. I had to write about it though upon reading many of the thoughtful posts featured in that little box of wonderful posts in the left column of this space.

Because we must remember.

September 11, 2001. I doubt there is a person in this country who doesn’t know where they were when they found out about the attack.

I was in my office, exceptionally early for me, going through email when a co-worker came in to tell me about a plane hitting the Twin Towers. We assumed it was an accident as most others did I believe. Our company didn’t have a TV so we sought one out in a neighboring office on our floor and sat down just as the second airplane hit. At that moment, we knew this was no accident.

As we sat there, the phone rang and the woman whose TV we were watching took a call from a friend. Her friend was calling to tell her that his wife had just called and she was on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Immediately, we went up to the roof of our building to see the smoke rising from the Pentagon just miles away. It was so surreal–the beautiful day, the plumes of black smoke and the silence. Our building was in the flight path for National Airport and yet it was silent–until the fighter jets screamed across the sky. Seeing fighter jets fly that low over the nation’s capital is something I never want to see again. To this day, if I hear a jet (typically from Andrews AFB) fly low over head, a surge of panic freezes me in my spot.

I was pregnant on that day. I had just found out and only my husband knew. That fact prevented me from truly experiencing all that was happening around me. I called my mother and tried to reassure her that I was safe. I wanted to say, “it’s okay I’m pregnant!” I knew that would stop her tears, but I couldn’t. Secretly, I was worrying about the world that was going to exist for my child. Would it ever be the same?

Now that baby is five years old and he runs and he laughs and he plays baseball and he doesn’t yet know about that terrible day. And each day on my way to work, I drive by the side of the Pentagon that was destroyed. Never do I pass that spot without looking to the right at where the building was hit and to the left from where I imagine the plane must have come. Never do I forget the people who died there.

I wasn’t going to write about this, because I didn’t lose anyone that day. But, many people did. And, I will never forget.