Minneord

My Grannie died on Saturday at the age of ninety-five. She died in the way she most wished for, in a hospital with a team of doctors performing every possible form of resuscitation. I'm not really sure if she achieved any sense of peace with death at the end. Despite living the last two decades or so largely in bitterness, frustration, and poor health, she clung desperately to life, or, perhaps more accurately, to the idea of being alive.

It's hard to sort out the emotions I feel at her death. On the one hand I carry a fair amount of resentment over the way she chose to live and die, and over her obvious disapproval way that I have chosen to go about living. I sort of had to give up on her emotionally when it became clear that nothing I was ever going to do as an adult would be "right" in her eyes.

But on the other hand, I am terribly sad at the loss of the Grannie of my childhood. She was an enchanting grandmother. Everything she did was slow and deliberate. She thought long and hard about every little detail in the very limited life she led. She monitored everything, noting important events in a little book that she kept by her chair. She kept her shoes stacked up in their original shoe boxes in her closet. She read every word of the sentiments printed in greeting cards. The way she would smooth the sleek fur around her beloved dog Bobbie's eyes showed extraordinary deliberation and affection. Nothing escaped her, and in observing even her simplest actions I often found myself mesmerized.

She was a small town beauty queen who loved stock car racing and Hank Williams (Sr. and Jr.). I can still hear her astoundingly slow southern Illinois twang reading out her telephone number on her answering machine ("You have reached ... 6-1-8 ... 5-6-8 ...). In my memory that number seems to go on forever. She had me call her "Grannie" because that was the English way to do things, and her own grandmother was an immigrant from Yorkshire. Here they are together, when Grannie was a young teenager:

They were thick as thieves, and Grannie knew unequivocally that her grandmother loved her best. I knew that too as a child, though she was quiet and reserved. She was painfully shy, but warm and giggly when it was just the two of us. We shared a great affection throughout my childhood, right from the very start, although we only got to see each other twice a year at vacations.

She was unrelentingly fastidious, and terrified of appearing unkempt, or poor, or slovenly, terrified of the small town gossips. Every detail of her attire was coordinated, achieved only after much thought and careful planning. She would go back and look at a jacket in the store five or six times before she would buy it. She loved diamonds, and carried all her best jewelry with her in her purse at all times. On car rides from the airport she always had me look through her purse, pointing out her "good" rings, a new wallet, or a couple of new watches with a sheepish, conspiratorial look. She never paid with exact change. Instead, she would break a bill and take the change home to save, sometimes just to build up a buffer, but often so as to have rolls and rolls of coins to give to me when I came to visit.

She remembered anything anything anyone ever said about her. She never forgave an affront (intentional or imaginary) and brooded obsessively over the losses and injustices of her life. She would whisper bitterly to herself on car rides when she thought no one could hear.  I suspect that she never felt that she was in charge of her own life. When confronted with a moment of freedom or autonomy she invariable made the most conventional choice.

I am sad that she has died because she was so desperate to stay alive, but, oddly, not sad about losing her now. If I'm really honest, I've probably been mourning the loss of the Grannie I once knew for about twenty years. What I am most sad about is the fact that we found it so difficult to relate to each other once I became an adult.