Grandma

i was remembering my grandmother today....... and the memories made me smile..... what a good thing it is when death takes someone we love dearly to finally be able to get to that point where the memories no longer bring tears but bring smiles ......

let me share with you a little bit about this amazing woman who helped shape and form the woman i have become...........

grandma was a tiny bit of a thing.. not more than 5 feet tall and 90 pounds soaking wet. All of my formative years were spent either living upstairs from her and grandpa or living next door.... Most small children were terrified of her cause for all the world she looked just like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz.........and i guess.. if truth be told.. she could be a witch..... i know her daughters in law were frightened of her.. her sons were frightened of her.. even her husband - grandpa - who stood head and shoulders over her was leery of her.........

She ruled the family with an iron fist......... held us all together with true grit .... Each sunday the family followed her down the aisle in church and filed into the family pew....... and god help any member who claimed to be sick on Sunday morning!!! Each sunday evening the family would gather round the dining room table laden with food and argue and bicker and yell and yeah .. laugh too..

Grandma was superstitious .. and lived her life and tried (god love her ) to live everyone else's by the superstitions she had been raised on..... The one i will remember till the day i die ........ was...... on the day i was married i had to put a penny in my shoe (for good luck you see) and the ding dang penny got lodged just under the ball of my foot .. and pinched all the nerves .. my foot fell asleep and i could barely stand still during the service.. AND it took a week of honeymooning to bring the full feeling back..........

i remember grandma sitting on her front porch listening to me talk about friends .. loves lost....the Vietnam war (it was during the 60's)... religion.. everything that mattered to me... she would sit and listen and every once in a while she would utter some words of wisdom........ but mostly she listened.. encouraging me to voice my opinions.

i remember lacing grandma into her corset... just like in Gone with the Wind.. she would hold on to the bed post and i would lace her in tight! i often wondered who did that for her when i wasn't around.......... and i remember how small her waist was.. god i could put my hands around her waist and my fingers would touch !! i remember for my wedding.. my mother and an aunt convincing my grandmother she could NOT wear the corset.. but had to get a bra and wear it.. (she was known for purchasing them but never actually wearing one) and she did.. and she never let me forget it either!!! "dang thing choked the breath out of me" she would say........ and i would wonder how in god's name her tight corset had allowed her to breath at all!!

i remember spending hours and hours in her kitchen with her learning to make everything from bread to pastry (ok ok i failed the pastry making) to main course meals... i remember sitting on the sofa beside her while she tried to teach me to knit.. and after weeks of frustration her finally teaching me to crochet - "because at least in crocheting there are supposed to be holes!!" i still have the lace doilies and lace trimmed pillow cases she made for my "hope chest".. because i just never quite got the hang of crocheting or tatting...

She always said she would never live to see her great grandchildren.. but she lived to see my eldest turn 2....... She hated the old folks home she moved to in her 89th year cause her "boys" had finally convinced her the house was just too much work for her.. and how she would complain to me on the phone about the "old" people she was having to live with......

At the ripe old age of 91 she boarded a plane for the first time ever to fly to Bermuda to visit with her youngest son...... returning 3 months later.. taking to her bed .. and dying quietly only 3 months after that....... i remember her nurse saying she was a real lady - who had lived with dignity and died with dignity.

Sometimes she still whispers in my ear... and i always listen........