Being 2000 miles away from loved ones has its ups and downs. I was not around Grandma when she became ill, and so my memories of her are those of when she was healthy. I know her health declined in these past few years, and even though I did see her after her leg was amputated, I still remember her as the spunky Grandma of my childhood. I will always remember her this way, and I think that is an “up.”
Thinking about her these past few days, I’d say the best memories of my life are memories with my Grandmother and I feel so blessed to have and to hold these memories so dear in my heart. I’ll be gliding along in my day, going about my chores and suddenly I’ll remember another good time with Grandma. I’ll giggle out of sheer joy at the stories she’s told me about her life and I feel grateful to have had her in my life.
So it’s a bit surreal that I will never see her again. This is the “down.” It’s hard to process the fact that she has passed away when, in my mind, she is still healthy and full of spitfire. I know she passed away on Thursday. It is just now sinking in that she is, in fact, gone.
Last night, just as I was about to fall heavily into a blissful slumber, I heard my Grandmother’s laughter. The sound was so real, it was as if she was in the room with me. It woke me from my (almost) sleep, and more memories of her flooded my mind. It was about midnight and I got up from bed and sat in the kitchen, looking out the window at the moon and stars, just thinking about her. And I cried.
One of my favorite memories of Grandma is when she shared details about her life as a little girl. About six years ago, my Grandma Champine and her sister Barbara visited us in Idaho during the holidays. Over breakfast one morning, the stories of her life started to pour out of her like the syrup we used on our pancakes.They were warm and sweet and flowed slowly and some stories were sticky and…oh, I only wish I had a tape recorder!
She laughed as she shared the story about the time her father decided to pack up the family and move them to Hollywood, CA. Her mother (whom I learned was very gullible) reluctantly obliged. Three days later, they found themselves broken down in Pennsylvania. What’s more, as fate would have it, the gentleman who stopped to help them with their car just happened to be her father’s cousin.
Because I grew up so far away from my Grandmother, I never had the chance to sit and listen to these stories before. As we sat at the breakfast table, I begged her to continue and I learned so much about her in that little two hour chunk of time; more than I ever could imagine I’d ever know about my Grandmother.
She talked about her father’s wanderlust, how he kept the family constantly moving, strapping a matress to the car and just up and leaving. And if they had no place to sleep at night, Grandpa would pull off to the side of the road where they’d sleep under the stars, the entire family sharing the matress .
She talked about living in a little shack in PA, just down the hillside from the railroad tracks.
She mentioned how she met my Grandfather and how he’d pull the car over to the side of the road and kiss her passionately when they were first married.
She talked about her Grandmother Hooper, and how she got the name ”Hooper.” (From hooping bushels and barrels, of course…) I learned about her family namesakes…the Fowlers, the Hoopers, the Reeses, the Hadds.
After my visit with her, I rushed to write down all I could remember about our conversation and as I wrote, my mind filled in the blanks. It’s funny; before this day I never thought of my Grandma as having a past. Prior to our breakfast, she was just Grandma who had always been here and would always be here. Grandma who had wet, juicy kisses for me whenever I came over to her house, who made jello fluff and always had Hostess treats for us grandkids~even if we were grown who had kids of our own. After that day I viewed her in a different light. Now she was a woman with a history and feelings and stories to share and a lot of spitfire still in her. This multidimensional woman caught my imagination and I wanted to know more, more, more!
Last Wednesday, My Aunt told me she was ready to go, that Grandma said she wanted to go “home and see Ma & Dad and her sister.” She left us on Thursday.
As I was trailing off to sleep last night, I imagined her journey to heaven. She was seven again. Her dad had packed up the family and they were camping along the roadside under the brightly shining stars and moon. It was her family’s penultimate road trip together.
And I could hear Grandma laugh out loud.
