Yesterday my grandmother lost her very difficult battle with cancer.
But to define her beautiful life by how cancer ended it would be falling so short of what it was. I have nothing lovely to write because I’m pretty sure everything lovely died with her. You know those things in life that are SO wonderful that you couldn’t quite describe them to someone if you tried? Like the whole Van Morrison album, Enlightenment. Except Grammie was far more beautiful and indescribable than Enlightenment.
The only way I can think to describe her is hard for outsiders of Massachusetts to understand. Because people who have never lived in Massachusetts think it’s a stupid place. My husband, Matt, hates that people who have never lived in New Jersey think that New Jersey is stupid, because he’s from South Jersey and it really is a whole different ballgame than North Jersey. Well, that’s how I feel about Massachusetts. You really can’t love it until you’ve lived there, and then whenever you live anywhere else all you can think about is how wonderful Massachusetts is.
So people from Massachusetts will understand it when I say that my Grandmother was all of the beautiful things about the Commonwealth without any of the bad. She was the MFA and Walden Pond. She was the beaches of Cape Cod and the swan boats. She was the Revolutionary War statue in the center of Lexington, the Alcott House, the Victory Garden and Salem Harbor. She was all of those things, and it’s as if they’ve all disappeared for good.
I am itching to go home to honor her this weekend. I’m itching to be surrounded by the other people who knew how wonderful she was.
And strangely enough, more than anything else, I am itching to see my sister and rub her pregnant belly. Because my sister Gina is about as close a replica to my Grammie as you could find. And I am now counting down the days til the brand new life inside of her will meet us this summer. I know that baby will have reflections of Grammie, just like its mother, and will remind me that with every chapter that ends a new one begins.
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| Hans and Betty Band |
January 18th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
and i was proud of myself for making it through today without crying…
January 19th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
thanks, p. beautiful.
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:43 am
That was so beautifully written. Thank you for sharing Grammie with those of us who didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her on this side.
(Also, and this feels totally weird to include in the same comment, but I’ll do it anyways, happiest of congratulations to Gina on the new wee one!)