2000-07-05 - 15:54:36

I'm writing this on my way to NJ, after cutting short my trip to Florida by a day, because my grandmother died last weekend and her funeral is tomorrow.

My mind has been a little fragmented. My way of dealing with death appears to be to remember the person vividly in my mind to the point that I almost forget that they're gone. I'll be thinking of them and be suddenly startled to remember that they're not here anymore.

This happens a lot with my other grandmother, Dad's mom, who died just over a year ago. She was vibrant and loving life up to the moment she died. She did not have the slow descent toward death, with the complete decline of body and mind that some older folks do; one day she was there and the next she wasn't. So when I remember her, it is exactly as she was the last time I saw her.

My mother's mom, however, has been inching her way out of this life for over five years now. It's been difficult and frustrating to watch. Her body has failed her (*had* failed her, I'm supposed to say, now) to the point that she no longer has (had) the energy to really participate in life. None of us truly realized how frail she had become until we watched a videotape that was taken about 15 years ago. In the last five years she had become the physical shell of the woman she used to be. A "ghost", I called her. Her energy and sharpness and motherly affectionate air were almost completely gone, except for rare flashes when she could summon up the energy to participate in one of the noisy multiple-way conversations we always get into in my mother's kitchen.

It was funny, when she did say something it was always right on the money and completely relevant. She would sit there and you'd think she was falling asleep and not paying any attention, and then she'd come out with a comment that proved she'd heard every word of the entire conversation. I only wish I had been able to hear more from her.

I'm cursed with an awful memory (part of the reason I started this journal), and I really wish I remembered more about what she was like before she started to fade away. The things I do remember are odd little scenes that don't have a lot of significance.

I remember when I was in college how she'd watch the daytime talk shows, and she'd tell me about the crazy people she saw and shake her head in disbelief and amazement.

I remember how she'd half-laugh and say "oh, guy" when I'd tell her some outrageous (to her, anyway) story of something silly I'd done at college.

I remember the expression on her face when she talked about my grandfather, telling me how they met and got married, and how you "just know" when you've met the right person.

I remember how hard she laughed -- 'til she had tears in her eyes -- when I told her a cleaned-up version of Sam's (my boyfriend at the time) favorite joke.

I remember her hanging up the phone after talking to her elderly father about some molehill he had turned into a mountain, rolling her eyes and venting good-naturedly to my mother about it.

I remember watching her walk along the flagstone steps to her car, in her slingback shoes, to her car where she never ever wore a seatbelt and wasn't going to listen to the public-service announcements about it from her granddaughter.

I remember how she would smile at me when I was very small, her whole face crinkling up, and how'd she'd laugh at me when I did one of those funny kid things and take my face in her hands and kiss me.

I miss her.

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