Grandma

There are a million stories about Grandma, ones that we have told and retold for a laugh or to make the missing her dim a little. Today is just hard on me and I want to show how her heart was great, and her love for us was bigger than anything imaginable. But nothing I can say will be enough to give you an understanding to give  life to her memory.
It was christmas 1999 I was pregnant and having a hard time in my life. I called her to tell her happy birthday and she knew something was the matter with me. She kept asking what was wrong and I broke down with the silliest thing, It was almost christmas and I did not have a tree yet, and oh how I cried. There were a thousand other things wrong but the only one I could express was christmas without a tree. I left for work the next day, and she went to the tree lot all the trees on the lots were tied up, you know like umbrellas. She picked one probably at random and had them tie it to the top of her car. She got it into my house while I was at work, into a stand no less. Then cut the ties off and left. When I got home from work the branches had all settled and the tree had opened up. My ENTIRE dining room was full of douglas pine. The tree was so big you could not even walk into the room. I laughed until it hurt cause I knew who had surprised me.It was so big that when it came time to take it down it had to be cut up into little peices to get back out side.  She fixed the one thing that she could to make me smile, to try to make me happy. And just like always it was comedy.
She did everything she ever could for me, she would say "dont worry baby, we will figure it out". (That is my life motto.) The magic she worked to help me with my kids, to be there for us. I remember her working two jobs when I was little. I remember those awful dresses she paid too much money for to dress me like a princess, I even had hats and gloves, and one of them had little bells sewn into the pettycoat. I was her baby.
There were more times than I want to say that she helped keep the lights on at the house, or food on the table. Or if I mentioned even in passing "you know I would like to have ..." she made it happen somehow.  I saw a kitchen set I liked once and she bought I peice by peice until I had the whole thing, one chair at a time. And it didnt matter to her as long as she could help me, and it wasnt about the things, it was about what she wanted for me, the kind of life she wanted me to have. No matter how hard I tried to screw it up.
She was so much to so many people and I think as you live your daily life you forget about all that has come before. She played on a bowling league I remember the blue bag her ball was in and the ugly shirts. She made doughnuts and coffee at her second job at 5 am. She worked at the mill for years, on the floor where she lost most of her hearing, then in the destruction lab. It was her job to break it (for anybody who knows that is hilaroius). She didnt speak english until she was a teenager. The story is my grandfather taught her how. (explains a lot huh) She married a hillbilly Marine from Opp Alabama cause she liked the way he sounded when he talked. (My great aunt S tells me that he thought the same about her and he liked her funny french words) She didnt  get her license until her oldest daughter did. She hated the color red because it was her mom's favorite color. She had brothers and a sister. She went to catholic school. She traveled the country with my grandfather and each of her kids was born in a different state. Her best friends called her Maggie and they giggled like teenagers when they got together even though they were all well over 65. She loved ribbon candy and would eat it all but the red peices. She thought babies should be bathed atleast twice a day.  She never got past the loss of her oldest daughter, even after 18 years cried for her at night sometimes. She had her first heart attack trying to work a full time job and still be there C and the kids to help them through loosing their Moma. She sat by her best friend's bed for 4 months as the cancer took Aunt N away, and was holding her hand when she went, just two old friends. She once drove herself to have surgery because she did not want to tell us she was having her toes broken on purpose because she thought they were ugly, when the nurse called us to come pick her up she was really mad that we had left her there, we didnt even know she was doing it! These are all things that make up a life. Little peices that made her special, but are by no means the whole.
I miss your smile, I miss your laugh, I miss your silly sense of humor. I miss your 5 min time delay, I miss your silly little glove, I miss how you quacked in your sleep when you snored. I miss the phone checks just to find out what everybody in our house was doing at any given moment, I miss you calling me to tell me what happened on your soaps that day. I miss your touch, I miss your smell, I miss you.
And I know it is better for you, you dont hurt anymore, you are not sick and struggling anymore. And I know I am selfish and spoiled but you did it and I want my Grandma to hold me and tell me " dont worry baby, we will figure it out". I love you, my kids love you. I miss you every day. And most days it is easier but some days it is so much harder.
One last story, Grandma was living at Mom's house and I was right down the road in this little farm house about 1/2 a mile. Moma got the Christams cards together for everybody and gave them to Grandma, she put stamps on them and drove them to the Browns Summit post office. The post man sorts them and sends them out to be delivered. He brings mine to my house and puts it in the mail box at the top of the driveway. Grandma leaves her house, drives to mine, pulls the wrong way into oncomming traffic to check my mail box, gets the card out pulls into my driveway, drives to my house honks the horn for me to come outside and get my christams card from her. how do you make up stuff like that?