GRANDMA IS DEAD

I can't believe this is true, and I am even more shocked that I find it so troubling to deal with. She's been ready to die for years; her whole life was a journey in depression. It pissed me off, frankly, how this reality was ignored; I wanted her to get help, be happier. She had a lot of brilliance and laughts and love, too; I just wished. There was the good part of it, but those were globs of dough in the vat of blackness. How can it work like this, that beling alive isn't enough for us, that we have to be so well balanced with happiness and meaning?

I cleaned my stuff out of her basement today. I had piles of stuff stored down there from my various moves, and from when I lived with her for a couple of years. I should have gotten that stuff out while she was alive; I kept meaning to. I know it kind of bugged her to have it down there the few times she had the basement officially cleaned. But that was sort of my tie to the old life, to a family I always wanted more from.

It was horrible over there, with everyone going through stuff and divvying it up. Not greedy, just horrible. All my aunts and uncles, and mom, who I grew up with in that house in the 70s. And where they grew up in the 50s and 60s. My grandpa built the house. He died when he was 57 and I was 12.

The house has an offer on it. It's too fucked up to really process emotionally at all. Logically, no problem. But in the areas where life matters most, I feel like my heart lining has expired, is being cleaned out, tossed, and sold. I wish I'd found a way to manage it better while it was in my care.

I miss my grandma. Even though I hardly saw her the last several years, I just miss her being alive. I want to e-mail her, and I wanted to send her a postcard on my vacation last week. I got a book inscribed to her from the Detroit News, and enclopedia for winning a spelling be in like 1913 or something. I am getting almost all the books. I am amazed nobody else really wants them. There is also a book that was my mom's accounting text in junior high school, and my dad's name is written all over in the margins. Neat. Then came my existence.

I watched my cousin walking with his girlfriend when I drove away with my load of stuff today. They are 16. I can see how un-momentous their actions are, the little things they do. But those are the things that make up the roots of my life, the everyday-ness of my family when they were young. Why? It seems so backwards. Either that, or I shouldn't value it so much. Why can't I get on with a life, instead of being so emotionally obsessed with someone else's memories? My own seem so small.


Here is something I wrote when my grandma was dying.
We had copies around the visitation at the funeral home when she died.

Gramala
          This isn't about what a saint my grandma was (that would be boring). It's not about what she gave, how much she did for people, or even what kind of a woman she was. I imagine that she was somebody different to each of us: witty artist; lifelong neighbor; sassy young woman; stylish coworker; grandma; great-grandma; Scrabble buddy; mother; friend. I won't attempt to define her, or her life. I just want to tell you some of the things I loved about her. The things I will miss, and remember. The things that made Margaret Lobur my Gramala.

          I love that just a few weeks ago, on Good Friday, after I told her that I was feeling terrible for having lost a check someone sent me as a Christmas gift, she said in her characteristically prim way, "Well, people should know by now not to send Amy checks!" She had a way of somehow transforming my own faults into royal assets. I love not only that she knew me (and my scattered ways) so well, but that she was so willing to absolve me of my guilt.

          I love that she taught me how to play solitaire one hot summer day at the dining room table. It took hours, me on my knees in the old white vinyl chairs, but she explained all the rules-and the tricks-to this grubby seven-year-old grandkid. The family was saved from my "I'm bored" whines for a long time, and she played doubles with me at that table throughout my life.

          I love her Ardmore days, when her perfume preceded her into the kitchen every morning, and Larry, Angie, and I covered our cereal bowls with our hands, fearful the White Shoulders molecules would waft into our milk.

          I love that, one October when I was five and had been given permission (after much begging) to go to a haunted house with the big kids (Larry-my idol, Maryellen, etc.), and I chickened out just from the scary music outside, she didn't make me feel embarrassed. Instead, we sat in the Dart together and she taught me the whole song of Mairzy Doats. She sang it over and over, enunciating every word until I got it, and I felt like I'd been let in on a huge secret; such a mysterious song, and now I could sing it, too! And we would, together, in the kitchen, the yard, or the car:

"Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey,
a kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?"
(The Secret: "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little
lambs eat ivy, a kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?")
          I love she had such fun with words, and gave me a love for the same. I love that she would ask me for help with a crossword puzzle, and giggle through her frustrations with tricky words (those darned ernes!). And watching Wheel Of Fortune together.

          I loved hating Natalie and oh-my-ing at Erica's latest antics, and otherwise being involved with the citizens of Pine Valley with her. We watched All My Children together for 30 years; if I missed a week (or month or year!), she could always fill me in, including the drama.

          I loved watching her watch Jeopardy-she loved that Alex Trebek. She was sweet on Wilford Brimley, too, for a spell in the 80's, but later denied it. And just two months ago, she asked me to use my internet prowess to unearth what I could about her beloved "Chimmy" from the Lawrence Welk Show. "I am curious to know how he died," she wrote, "surely not from a broken heart because he didn't get to meet me in time." Ha, ha! "Any research you can uncover," she concluded, "will greatly enhance your lovesick grandma's life." We uncovered quite a bit about Chimmy, and she was pleased to learn he had, indeed, married after finding her unavailable.

          I loved her at Houghton Lake, doing a crossword puzzle or reading a novel in a lawn chair, out in front of the cabin, while we swam in the lake. Splashing around, I could see her there, and when she went in, it was time for All My Children. And she swam, too-for years and years. Everyone got their swimsuits on when she did, and she'd bob for hours on her air mattress, like a throne, while we dove for clams and pretty rocks to give her.

          I love that there's never been a Christmas without eggnog, even though I'm the only one who likes it.

          I love that she let me live with her when I was a miserable teenager, and that she drove over the same curb every morning taking me to school.

          I love that she made me a fancy lunch of Cornish hens a few months ago, with my favorites: chocolate milk, sliced cucumbers, and a table filled with condiment bottles.

          I love her giddy little giggles when she's feeling silly, sticking her nose in the air and shaking her behind with a twist.

          I love that e-mail opened up a new form of communication for my writer Gramala and me. We cracked each other up through letters, kept abreast of each others' lives, talked about dreams, and complained about woes. She believed I have talent, and encouraged me to limitless heights, though she pooh-poohed her own. My interest in writing, art, and comedy are firmly based in growing up with her and the creatively brilliant family she produced. I love that in the last couple of years, through writing, she became more than my grandma-she became my funny, witty friend.

          And finally, that these memories can last forever, though my time with her cannot.