Remembering My Grandmother

Thursday July 25, 2013


Today has not been an easy day though it would appear it was from the outside looking in.  I can tell how I am very much consumed with the memories of a different day because I nearly typed that day as I began this entry.  The day I nearly typed was July 25, 1993...twenty years ago.  My father's mother passed away on this day twenty years ago.  It doesn't seem possible that it has been so long since she passed away.  It seems like only yesterday.  And yet it was twenty years ago.

I can still vividly recall how I walked out the front door of the house I had always known as grandma and grandpa's house.  Several of my relatives were there at the house that day.  I delivered the news to them that grandma had just died.  And then I began crying.  I wanted to cry today.  I wanted to cry today for many reasons actually.

Twenty years have passed since that day and it doesn't seem possible how little I have to show for those twenty years.  Yes I have an amazing amount of formal education but I have little to show for it recently.  I have not had a job worthy of my skill set in several years.  Twenty years ago I had never imagined I would live through the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.  My grandmother was a young woman at the time of the Great Depression.  Somehow she lived through it and raised a family of seven children.  I wish she were still alive today so I could hear some of her wisdom.  I really need the love and encouragement of a grandmotherly type these days.  Twenty years may have passed but it seems like she died just yesterday.

One of my favorite memories from my childhood were the times I helped my grandmother pick strawberries in the plot of land behind the house where she and my grandfather had a garden for many, many years.  My grandfather was not quite as diligent as my grandmother was in regards to strawberry picking; he would leave the strawberries he could not easily see behind.  My grandmother could often find a veritable harvest of berries on the underside of the many strawberry plants in the garden.  In some small way I can honor her memory by recalling that memory to mind on this day.

My father's mother was the grandmother I knew.  My mother's mother passed away when I was a mere infant.  I have no conscious memory of her.  Grandmothers hold a special place in our hearts.  Once they are gone there is not a single person who can replace them.

I wish my grandmother were still alive today.  I really need a hug right now.  I also need a piece of her amazing apple pie.

I love you grandmother.  Wherever you are now I will never forget you.