A Passing

My grandmother passed away last night. She was 90.

It's not like this was wholly unexpected, yet I find myself sad today. She was very much the grandma of my childhood -- she delighted in small children, in the funny things they said and did, in their emerging personalities. She was less comfortable with us when we grew up and had opinions of our own, particularly if those opinions didn't mesh with her own.

I have so many memories of her from when I was little. Trips to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, the beach...she was forever taking us places like that, places kids love and seldom get to visit. She always kept excellent treats around like WonderBread, which we thought was manna from heaven, and store-bought cookies of the chocolately kind, and cheetos, which she knew we loved. She took us to movies and to play mini-golf. She rode the Ferris Wheel with us when she thought it might be too scary and came along with us when we drove Tin Lizzies -- the kind that were really just fancy golf carts on rails so kids could drive them and not get hurt.

She loved stories and she could remember all sorts of little incidents from our babyhood. She told us our own stories and laughed about them all over again. She was our number one fan -- nothing we did could ever be wrong and she'd knock down anyone who said it was. In fact, she couldn't bear any of us to be criticized and when we were older and did things that deserved criticism, she would still take the head off anyone who dared to do it, even someone in the family. Even us.

Her life was touched by sorrow. She'd lost a sister in a fire and a baby brother to illness. She lost all her older brothers to alcoholism. Her father died in his 50's of a heart attack. She married my grandfather in 1938 and got pregnant on her wedding night. She had her first child at the age of 19. By age 23 she had 3 children and her husband enlisted in the Marine Corps (he is still living. He's 93 and in the VA hospital, mind as clear as a bell). He was sent to the South Pacific and she moved next door to her mother to have some help with the kids. She lived to see one of her sons divorce 3 times, her daughter divorce once, and 4 of her eight grandchildren divorce 6 times. Just before her 80th birthday, in what would be the last lucid year of her life, her middle son died of liver cancer.

Parts of her life read like a scene from a movie. Her sister Clarice was married to an abusive husband, so she and my grandfather helped Clarice move out, and activity which ended with my grandpa beating up his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's brothers. Seems like that should be played by Marlon Brando, trailing a cigarette from one curling lip.

Other parts read like a comic novel. When she gave birth to my dad in 1938, she was given the first episiotomy the hospital had ever done. Consequently, the entire surgical and obstetric staff came by to see her stitches. Mortifying for a 19 year-old Catholic girl. Another time, she tied my 3 year-old uncle to the clothesline outside to keep him from wandering away while she went to get another load of wash to hang. When she came back, his overalls were hanging from the line and he was wandering around downtown, naked as the day he was born.

She kept secrets, and I think this is what really shaped the second half of her life. Her middle son, my uncle, was a stinker as a child, but as an adult he dabbled in more than his fair share of shady enterprises, finally landing in prison for a while. That was something we were never allowed to speak of. Her daughter got pregnant and had to get married. Her middle son abandoned his first family. One of my cousins had a drinking problem. Another did drugs. Her daughter had an affair that ended her marriage. All very hush hush. I think the strain of keeping it all in and trying to keep straight what lie she'd told to whom to cover it all up made her touchy beyond belief. She liked to be the spider in the center of the web, but it was a role that was too much for her in the end.

She has been lost to me for the last 10 years, slipping into that hazy half-world that some older people inhabit. She hasn't recognized anyone in 5 years, hasn't been able to speak for 2. It's a release, I suppose. And yet, I would have her back, selfishly, because for all her frustrating ways, I knew without a doubt that she loved me.

I am spending today wrapped in my memories, dabbing at the odd tear, wishing I could see her just once more and tell her that without a doubt, I loved her too.