Category Archives: pamily

(Grandma and Grandpa — probably around 1935 — just a guess.)
I am 43 years old and can count on one hand how many people close to me have died.

And of the people on that list, most died when I was young, or were far away in Germany, or played a part in my life when I was young but I rarely saw before they died.

I can remember attending three funeral/memorial services. Two of those were for my husband’s relatives.

My Grandma, who died on Tuesday, is the first person that I had regular lifetime contact with, that I’ve lost.

How can that even be possible?

I’m amazed and don’t get me wrong, completely grateful, although it’s not hard to fear that the second of half of my life is going to make up for it.

I didn’t have a spectacular relationship with my Grandma and I wondered how I was going to feel when this finally happened and I felt a lot shittier than I expected. And also angry. And I know all about the 5 stages of Grief but I wasn’t mad at her – she was 94! She had a good long life. And I wasn’t mad at God. She was 94! (And why have I decided that shittier has two “T”s? Maybe it should be shitier. But that doesn’t look right. Who gets to make the rule on that?)

I was just mad. About everything: coffee stirrers, red trucks, clouds. It made no sense.

I told Mom I wanted to help with the obituary and I wanted to submit something to the tribal newsletter. Being Indian was not Grandma’s thing, but she was an elder and our culture respects elders. And I want a nice story in the newsletter about my Grandma like all the elders get.

She was the last one standing (or, whatever) out of 17 children. There should be a medal for that.

So all afternoon I looked at what Mom had sent me about Grandma and I tried to figure out how to expand it and make it bigger and make sure that we didn’t miss out on anything she accomplished. What would she want to be remembered for? I didn’t want anything to be missed.

The part of me that was so mad at her for [redacted] remained silent. It’s not denial. It just realized all those things don’t matter any longer.

You read all these obituaries and everyone was well loved and brilliant and did amazing things and you wonder, what about all the assholes?

I’m not one who shies away from discussion of death and I’m always telling my husband what to do if I die young and tragically: “The password to my secret bank account is [redacted]” “No teddy bears at the side of the road” and “Don’t let them say I was so nice and great when I was really cranky and drank too much and had trouble finishing things.”

But unless you do something really dreadful (see Hitler, Stalin, Hussein) everyone gets a “bye” when they die.

Even Darth Vader was redeemed before he died. It’s a relief. I only want to remember the good things.

There’s a particular story about making apple sauce which I’m not going to tell here except to say it was not good. But this summer I canned my own apple sauce and as I was doing it I was thinking: my Grandma taught me how to do this.

Tomorrow is my no technology day. We’re going to celebrate Priscilla’s birthday with a day of football. (Bob said I could bring a book.)

Next week I have major events including my baking class on Wednesday and Arts & Lectures on Thursday. Not sure how much you will see me here but I will try.

As always: I appreciate all the comments and I’m visiting your blogs and photo streams but don’t always leave a note.

I did a Mother’s Day Post so I thought it only right to do a Father’s Day post as well — but b/c of the travel I’m running behind schedule. Besides that, Dad is in Germany and eating Fischbrotchen and who knows what other yummy things and not crying about his tardy Father’s Day Blog.

Item #1 – We had bring your daughters to work day awhile back and one of the partners brought his daughters in and everybody was coming up with copying and stapling jobs for them and my heart was really with these girls because what could possibly be more mind-numbing than an office all day long with people helpfully giving you copying to do like this is fun? (Aside: when I was a girl, we didn’t even have copy machines! We had those mimeograph things which is a great joke in Fast Times at Ridgemont High which I bet half the people don’t get any more.) Much as I sympathized, I was dying to take them aside and tell them what I had to do when I went to my Dad’s work when I was a kid.

We had to sort screws. This is not a joke. Dad had 10 pound coffee cans of screws and nails and whatever and we had to sort them. And this was not an approximate sort of job. If we mixed up the 5 and 3/10ths with the 5 and 1/2’s that was wrong. Welcome to mind-numbing.

Item #2 – When we were kids Dad had a pet Black Widow that we kept in a pickle jar. I want to say its name was Jackie but maybe it was Blackie. That makes more sense. We fed it flies that we shocked with a fly swatter. That spider lived FOR YEARS in our pantry in Agoura, California.

Item #3 – and this is the pay off item. When I graduated from college we had a group to Santa Barbara and this included Auntie Ivy (Grandma’s sister) and Uncle Al and I guess Grandma and the family. It’s all a bit dim by this time. After the graduation we went to the Santa Barbara Biltmore for brunch. And this was a 10 star brunch — I mean, you plotted very carefully what you were going to eat and how much and how fast because you wanted a bit of everything. They also served champagne which pretty much made the rest of the day a wash but that doesn’t figure into this story.

For some reason, with all this spread of incredible food, Aunt Ivy couldn’t find anything to make her happy. Also, it wasn’t cheap. I think it was like $45 in 19** dollars. We had a wonderful server who knocked herself out, carrying over the champagne bottle and taking care of us and trying to make Ivy happy. Ivy wanted fruit but the 3 giant serving trays and bowls of fruit that were set out for the guests were somehow not right. It was like it was cut into the wrong shapes. So our wonderful server went back to the kitchen and got Ivy a special plate of fruit cut into different shapes which still wasn’t right. (And I swear when I get old I’m going to be just like this and I can’t wait.)

When the whole thing was done we were all leaving — and here is where the great lesson from Dad comes in — I saw my Dad find the server and very discretely give her a $20 bill and thank her for her help.

You did good Dad, thanks for everything.