I lost my grandmother last week.
Unlike my car keys, virginity (pause for sarcastic thought processes galore), and sanity, I assure you I didn't lose her in my traditional scatter-brained way. She passed away in her warm cozy bed at Brookdale Retirement Center at the ripe ol' age of 91 years. Whereas I had been pretty lax in visiting her regularly, I always managed to see her on birthdays, occasionally on holidays, and had a pretty impressive hospital run over the years since she seemed to treat those like they were all expense paid vacations to Club Med. St. D and myself offered to pick her up and drive her to our annual family reunions, but were pleasantly relieved of that duty after we were 0 for 2 in making sure we had everything necessary for a "day out on the town" of oxygen.
Her viewing and funeral was this past Monday. It was filled with the traditional soft smiles, hugs, "I'm so sorry" from caring and generally concerned family and friends. I would have preferred a wine and cheese table (as would she I'm sure), but the death care industry is as tight with "social mores" as a Catholic mass, so we settled for a very traditional, quiet service. As I walked to her casket with my mother and sister, I didn't get the same overwhelming anxiety that most get when in the same circumstance. My cousin did her hair and makeup, and quite frankly she looked beautiful (dead, but pretty damn spiffy). I kept waiting for some sense of sadness to rush over me.
But it never happened.
And it still hasn't.
So I have to ask myself, what the HELL is wrong with me?
I had always considered myself pretty damn lucky to have had my grandparents for as long as I did. At St. D and my wedding, I have photos taken of us at the alter with THREE of my grandparents, as did St. D. I remember even then thinking how incredibly lucky we both were. But as time went by, we began losing them. Dan's paternal grandparents lived to be in their early 90's, his maternal grandmother mid 80's. Same with my maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother. But my Grandma Midge was quite the spitfire. She had knocked on death's front door quite a few times over the last several years, but got denied at the entrance (probably a "union" thing- unpaid membership fees, who the eff knows). I remember hugging my grandpa and my mom's younger sister at the hospital when they "didn't think she'd make it", only to stare slack jawed the next day while she ate a meatloaf dinner and sat in her hospital bed requesting Tapioca pudding and plush slippers. Then, years later, hugging my grandma as my grandpa neared his last breath, and the same when my mom's younger sister passed away quietly. "Well ya know, mom was never supposed to outlive dad and Doreen"- well yea, guess what suckas... she did!
My Grandma Midge was not your "cookies and milk" grandma that kissed your scraped knee because you didn't listen and decided to play in the 3 inch space behind the garage and back fence. She would sigh heavily while spraying the Bactine on your wound, and reminded you that THAT is why we DONT PLAY BACK THERE. She would happily get the 1967 Barbie Camper and dolls down so that you could play with them, but "MAKE SURE YOU PICK THEM UP AND DONT LOSE ANYTHING!!! Doreen has had those a LONG time... ya hear?"
My grandpa met her in a bar back in the late 40's. My mother's biological mother passed away while giving birth to my mom, and after sometime, my grandfather, being a man in his early 20's with a little baby, decided to try the "dating scene" again. My Grandma Midge herself a young widow with a son and daughter of her own decided to get "Brady Bunch" with Grandpa, and they made it offical on July 28th, 1950. A decade later they welcomed a daughter together, and life as a lower middle class family was set. Through the years, her "gritty" personality shorn through to those that knew her, but underneath it all, I always wanted to believe that there was a cup of hot chocolate and a story to be read waiting for me, but alas, it never came.
But that was Grandma Midge. It wasn't that she didn't care, or didn't "love"- that was simply her personality, and as I grew up, I realized that it's often difficult to where several masks through life. You are who you are, and you do the best you can around that notion.
I think maybe the last few years of her life have been the most educational for me. Sitting with her during a visit, I was always astounded by clarity of memories past. She would tell me the story of her first husband, and his "cheatin ways" as if she saw him in front of her- down to the last detail of what she had on the day she threw his "sorry butt out". She would chuckle at herself remembering stories of her childhood, of her "bar-hopping" days and how, when my Aunt Jane was a baby, my grandmother, newly widowed, would leave Jane in her crib with a bottle and go downstairs to drink. When the place got raided, she escaped through a staircase that not many knew about, and back upstairs to "check" on the baby. I would laugh with her, thanking her for putting my boozing ways into prospective, and that, even though not blood related, we had some kind of "bond" with the bottle. She would always ask how my girls were doing in school, reminding me that they get their "smarts" from HER, and stop just long enough to gossip with me about the "annoying chatter box down in room 312".
I last saw her on December 30, 2010. Something in me decided to go and buy her some Sutter White Zin, and "celebrate" New Years early. I stopped in after work, and noticed that she wasn't quite herself. She began fairly unresponsive, but a potty break later, and once I presented her with the best "cheap" wine that Sutter Vineyards can provide, her eyes lit up and asked me to drink with her. She regailed me with the same stories of her bar-hoppin days that I had heard several times before, but I didn't mind. I took a small sip with her to make her happy, but enjoyed more so the look of happiness and content as the sweet nectar of the vine found its way to her small aging lips, refreshing her if only for a moment. As I hugged her goodbye, she squeezed me tight, and told me she loved me- words that I had grown used to hearing from her only in the last few years. Words that confirmed what I "sorta already knew" in childhood, but rarely heard spoken.
Grandma Midge wasn't a lady. She was a broad.
She wasn't cookies and milk. But she made a mean homemade "pot pie".
She let the frustrations of her life glare through. But you always knew where she stood and how she felt about you.
I guess the lack of tears isn't as much a "lack of caring", but maybe a quirkey reflection of the personality that was her life.
A tough old dame that has probably already gotten St. Peter and 90% of Heaven punch drunk on cheap booze.
Save a place for me Grandma. And until then....
I do love you.
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