Grandma

(not a photo of my grandma but a photo of Wild Bill Hickok) 

My Grandma wrote me a letter when I was fifteen that said, "They won't let me stay at the house by myself. They don't trust me, they think I'm going to run off with Wild Bill Hickok." Thus began my adoration for Wild Bill and thus was manifested my Grandma's sense of humor that was barely masking her frustration with her children and with aging. My Mom said at this point she wasn't the mother she remembered but this is the Grandma I knew.

My Grandpa had died three years before. I would see my Grandma spinning the rings on her wedding ring finger and I would wonder if she was thinking of him.

She had spent the summer living with us and when fall came we relinquished her care to my Aunt because it was decided that our winters were too cold and lonely to keep her with us. But I had delighted in having someone who dawdled over meals like I did. And someone had the time to be delighted by me. I could amuse her by trying to balance spoons on my nose or convince her to go driving with newly permitted me by telling her it would be an adventure. Growing up 1100 miles away from all my relatives and being the same age of some of my cousins' kids meant that I'd never had those close grandparent/aunt/uncle relationships. This was my one chance.

She died when I was sixteen, my last grandparent to go. It was June, we drove down for her funeral, slept on the floor of what had been her bedroom and cleaned out her closet. I was bequeathed her beautiful fake fur coat because everyone else in the family felt I was the only one who would actually wear it. I do.

This summer my mother unearthed my Grandma's journals. She's been reading them and soaking up the writings and wit of the Mother she had known. One Sunday I was Skyping with my parents and she said, "I wish I could Skype Mom and Dad in Heaven." If I could invent that, I would. But she tells us about these journals and how she wants to pass them around to her siblings. I stared at the beautiful brown book in her hands and asked her if I could type it up first so there would be a digital copy in case anything got lost. She looked dubious, maybe that's because I am a typical university student who takes on too much. I begged her, "Mom, I love journals, this would be something I would really enjoy doing." My sister took up my case, "She does, Mom. It would work, she could type for half an hour a day, it would be relaxing for her."

I won and I'm happy. I started typing this evening and in just half an hour Grandma made twenty jokes. This is the woman in that large, old photograph who I'd stare at and think, "Now, that's classy. That's what I want to be." This is the woman who once wrote me a letter wishing she could go back to the home she and her husband had built and lived in for sixty years but could not because she could no longer take care of herself. I bet she did dream of running off with Wild Bill Hickok.