Grandma Cows

Yesterday Angela and I were talking to my parents about what color they're going to paint their house this summer. My mom wants us to look at some color samples online and help her narrow them down. Angela pipes up and says, you know who would've been great at this? Grandma Cows.

And it's true, she would have been. She knew something about interior decorating and design that always was just right for the situation at hand. She helped my mom pick out wallpaper, make wall hangings, move furniture. Heck, she had enough practice in her own living room. We rarely went to Grandma and Grandpa's house when the furniture was in the same spot twice. And we'd stop by daily. Daily.

She'd get up every night almost, move things around, rearrange till it felt just right. She had superhuman strength. Grandpa was never involved in this, in fact, he was lucky if he knew where to sit the next morning.

Grandma Cows would have been 90 today. Ninety years old. I have a hard time reconciling that with the woman who just last summer was eating cookies, drinking been and fighting with the cable company so she'd get her Internet working. She had to keep up with Facebook and email you see. She almost never posted on Facebook but she saw everything. And I loved waking up in the morning to find an email she'd sent the night before when she couldn't sleep. More often than not I'd call her instead of reply. She loved to talk on the phone yet almost never called. She didn't want to bother me. So instead, I called often. Especially when I was driving. I'd pass the time telling her what was going on, what I was cooking that day or where I was going. What I was writing. What I was watching on TV. She loved to talk.

Several Christmases ago when we first got a Wii, she came right over the day after Christmas and bowled with us. And regaled us with tales of all her strikes when she'd played on a league years earlier. To me, Grandma was ageless, she was just grandma. Always the same. Always making potato salad and baking rolls and smashing the strawberries for shortcake.

She wore the same housecoats or shorts, would walk outside in her socks and never once tried a shirt or a dress or a pair of pants on in a store though she shopped all the time. If it didn't fit, take it back. Or hang it in the closet, it might fit later.

I'm not sure I'll ever forget my last week with grandma, my last day. It had been a long summer, grandpa had been sick for a few years but the end really took it's toll on her. She was a trooper though, making it through the funeral on her own two feet. We spent a lot of time with her that week after the funeral, just sitting, talking, sharing stories. She told us the same stories we'd heard hundreds of times and new ones, sprinkled with a good dose of fantasy we guessed. Grandma was the ultimate fisherman even though it was grandpa who went out on the boat every summer: her tales grew and grew as the days went on. 

That last day we spent with her was perfect in that it wasn't. It was a normal day, like so many we'd had with grandma over my lifetime. It was five days after grandpa's funeral and my mom, dad, Angela and I arrived in two separate cars at her apartment at 8am. We stopped on the way and got donuts from Quality Dairy. There's something grandma loved most in all the world and that was a donut. She had the coffee brewing and we settled in to hear a few more stories.

Soon Sue arrived and Mom and her got to work on the thank you notes we were there to write. But grandma didn't get busy right away. She had to deal with some neighbors. See wherever grandma lived, and during my lifetime she lived in at least seven different places, she made friends. Fast friends, good friends. And her last apartment was no different. People stopped by, to check on her, to say hello, to offer a hug and a coffee cake. She was happy in that apartment, so happy.

Angela and I were watching the grandneighbors that afternoon back in Howell (grandma's apartment was in Lansing) and then we were going on to a Tigers game that night. We had to leave the gathering early. I remember grandma insisting that she walk us all the way to the door. And she did, outside, even though her legs were swollen and she was tired. She walked us outside and gave me a hug and said she'd see me soon. She knew I was going back to California in a day or two and we both ended up in tears. But happy tears. Oh so happy tears. We'd spent the week together. We'd spent a lifetime together. A few miles didn't matter. Nothing did really. Over my life there'd been disagreements and knock down drag out fights and it didn't matter. In that family, you were always family. We spent one Christmas disowned by grandma. No Christmas. Presents delivered by a quiet grandpa. And still, we went back, eventually.

That day, as I walked to my car, wiping the tears, I had no idea it'd be the last time I saw her. Not a clue. As my mom liked to say, Bette had been dying since the day she met her (over 40 years earlier). She had made it through heart attacks and strokes and cancer and so much else. Nothing could keep her down. We were sure she'd outlive us all. And yet, she didn't. One week to the day that we buried grandpa she had a massive heart attack.

I didn't see her while she was in the hospital. I had many conversations with my dad about whether or not I should fly back to see his mother, his mother who spent too many days at the end in bed. She hated being in bed. She'd much rather spend her time at the computer playing solitaire, reading a book a day (she's the one who helped instill in me a love of reading - she gave me my first Danielle Steel book in 8th grade, Palamino, and it changed my life), baking a cake every morning or checking out the neighbors from her front window seat.

And so I didn't go see her in bed. I couldn't do it. It was hard enough seeing grandpa in the hospital and I only did that once. I wanted to remember her as she had been - walking if not running through life.

The relationship I had with my grandmother is unlike any other I've ever had. She's the person I would call on the phone after school and tell about my day back when phones had cords and you had to memorize a person's number. She's the person who had me stay at the farm for weekends on end, reading and baking and just being, each summer. She's the person who loved driving and would pretend we were in the Batmobile whenever we were going down M-59. She loved to yell that we were throwing out nails to stop the bad guys. She's the person who made everyone in my family read the novel I wrote. She the person who bragged on me and supported me and was sure that someday, every one of my dreams would come true.

She's also the person who hurt me more than anyone in my life had hurt me before. She was volatile and mean and spiteful. And yet? I loved her so much. So very much. Because she was real. She was funny and smart and strong and mine. Oh so mine.

Grandma, I hope today you and Pat and Grandpa are having the biggest party up in heaven. I hope you run into Grandma and Grandpa Knapp and remind Grandma that you were married to Bill first. I hope that you run into Grandma MacDonald and play a little croquet and have a good fight about the rules, just for old time's sake. I hope you get a donut and a beer and a long chat with good friends. And most of all, I hope you know how much I love you and miss you. Every. Single. Day.