“This is the hardest call I’ve ever had to make.” That was my father’s voice, two thousand miles away. “Your grandmother died.”
I was at college in Texas, a whimsical choice. So far from home. My parents had kept the bad news secret until after Thanksgiving, which I spent with a friend. They didn’t want to ruin my holiday.
I was glad I’d eaten my supper— a grilled cheese sandwich— before the call because I couldn’t have eaten anything afterward. I cried all night long, my eyes swollen and red next day.
My bond with my mother’s mother was special. I’d been a sickly child, and I’d spent many school days at Grandma’s. She read to me as I cuddled in her lap. We played with dominoes, blocks, and an old board game called “Pirate and Traveller.” We made up the rules.
On memorable weekends, I slept over at Grandma’s, and more often than not, I appeared at her bedside in the middle of the night so I could crawl under the covers with her.
Mom took us for rides in the country, near Grandma’s birthplace. She could name every bird, every flower. I wish I’d paid closer attention, though I remember the chocolate ice cream cones she bought me at Dairy Queen, each with one thin dime extracted from her change purse.
I remember weeding dandelions in her yard with her. When I got older, I mowed her lawn and trimmed her hedge. All that was a pleasure.
Birthdays were always a joint celebration because Grandma gave both my sister and me gifts, primarily books. She also sat us down to write holiday cards and thank-you notes.
When I went away to Texas, we wrote each other regularly. My parents put my last letter to her in her coffin.
Grandma gave me a copy of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, all about the author’s childhood spent with a beloved elderly relative. They bake fruitcakes together as Christmas approaches. They fly kites they make for each other as Christmas gifts.
Then “one morning arrives in November… when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim, ‘Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!’”
And the young Capote, miles and miles away at school, gets the message that “merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself.”
He walks across campus, looking at the sky and expecting to see “rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”
That’s how I felt when I lost Grandma’s lap and sheltering embrace forever.
I was at college in Texas, a whimsical choice. So far from home. My parents had kept the bad news secret until after Thanksgiving, which I spent with a friend. They didn’t want to ruin my holiday.
I was glad I’d eaten my supper— a grilled cheese sandwich— before the call because I couldn’t have eaten anything afterward. I cried all night long, my eyes swollen and red next day.
My bond with my mother’s mother was special. I’d been a sickly child, and I’d spent many school days at Grandma’s. She read to me as I cuddled in her lap. We played with dominoes, blocks, and an old board game called “Pirate and Traveller.” We made up the rules.
On memorable weekends, I slept over at Grandma’s, and more often than not, I appeared at her bedside in the middle of the night so I could crawl under the covers with her.
Mom took us for rides in the country, near Grandma’s birthplace. She could name every bird, every flower. I wish I’d paid closer attention, though I remember the chocolate ice cream cones she bought me at Dairy Queen, each with one thin dime extracted from her change purse.
I remember weeding dandelions in her yard with her. When I got older, I mowed her lawn and trimmed her hedge. All that was a pleasure.
Birthdays were always a joint celebration because Grandma gave both my sister and me gifts, primarily books. She also sat us down to write holiday cards and thank-you notes.
When I went away to Texas, we wrote each other regularly. My parents put my last letter to her in her coffin.
Grandma gave me a copy of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, all about the author’s childhood spent with a beloved elderly relative. They bake fruitcakes together as Christmas approaches. They fly kites they make for each other as Christmas gifts.
Then “one morning arrives in November… when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim, ‘Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!’”
And the young Capote, miles and miles away at school, gets the message that “merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself.”
He walks across campus, looking at the sky and expecting to see “rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”
That’s how I felt when I lost Grandma’s lap and sheltering embrace forever.