She Calls Me Grandma

     I am thinking of my grandma tonight.  I knew when she died I would miss her, but I had this sweet children's storybook idea of her smiling down on me.  And I know she is.  She waited by the door of the care center the evening before she died.  "I got a call," she told the nurse, "they're coming for me."   From my birth until her death she was a part of every milestone in my life, and thus she left imprints all over to sustain me.  And yet what I didn't understand was how I would miss her presense in each ordinary moment.   
     I wasn't at her funeral, haven't been to the cemetary since she passed last summer, and in my family tradition, that's just not how we do it.  I've promised my mother I will go with her this weekend to plant a red rose, a companion to the yellow one I planted for my grandpa a few years ago.  I find myself lacking emotional strength, and suprised that it's so hard.  Because she's on my mind this evening and in my heart always, I'm posting something I wrote shortly before she died, which ended up being read at her funeral in my absense.

She Calls Me Grandma

     She calls me Grandma. She’s just a little thing, 15 months old, and it doesn’t quite sound like “grandma,” but it’s definitely her word for me. She says it over and over to me, like a question, and my heart smiles. I wonder what that word means to her now; I imagine what it will mean to her in the years to come.
     I know what “grandma” means to me. My grandma. A tiny, plump Italian lady with a smile seldom absent for long. The one person I never doubted would make instant time for me. A person who required hugs and kisses, and who never told me goodnight without also saying “God bless I love you,” the words touching together like a secret phrase that would keep me forever from harm.
     She was the perfect companion for a little girl, the one who colored endless pictures with me, taught me how to play Jacks and amazed me with her ability to do “baskets,” held my hand on summer afternoon strolls, bought me Zots at Bud’s and a Little Golden Book every time we went to town.
     When I was older, and the stresses of teenage life got me down, I found I would still wander to her house to curl up in a chair in the tiny living room, where the radio played low and cheerful. She always had a drawer full of miniature snickers bars and a bowl of peanut clusters. She was always bustling about, a five a.m. riser who didn’t slow down until after the 10:00 p.m. news, but chances are she would come to sit still in the other chair, to keep me company. I don’t remember if I even talked to her at those times, but she’s a warm, safe presence in my memory nonetheless.
     As a young adult, I was aware that I was more adult than she. I drove her to the store and took charge of the shopping list. I knew when I didn’t see eye to eye with the rest of the world, she would agree with me without question. I could count on her to give me her last dime, which I sometimes found I needed to take. Less selfish than anyone I’ve ever known, nothing made her happier than to make me happy. When I opened my daycare she scrubbed dishes, swept floors, and restacked the red, yellow and blue blocks on their shelf a thousand times. With childlike concentration she joined in our art projects, with warmth and comfort she welcomed each child into her arms and onto her lap. In the rare quiet times, we chatted together companionably about small things.
     She sits now in a chair by the window at Canyon West Rest Center. I planned to see her twice a week and didn’t think for a minute that I would fail. But my days go by quickly, filled with the coming and going of children, overstuffed laundry hampers and overgrown flowerbeds, watching Devin burst across the goal line for a touch down, reading to Trey as he drifts to sleep, smiling with Holly as she experiences motherhood. The reasons I am here and Grandma is there are many, but her empty sunflower coffee cup makes me lonely.
     As life flows from one stage into the next, Makiah calls me grandma and I begin to create one for her, out of the best pieces of me. My own beloved grandma taught me how. If my granddaughter looks back over 40 years of her life and finds sweet memories of time we spent together, I will have made a connection across generations, to pass forward the precious gift I was given.