Since 1944

When I remember my Grandma Broadbent, my first thought is always of her huge smile and fabulous hugs, given at the front door so that you felt as if you were the most important person ever to come and visit with her.  She rarely used my given name, preferring to call me Joyful or Snookie and I knew that she knew me, not just grandchild #x out of 45, and because she knew ME and loved me all was right with the world.    As rightfully celebrated as her cooking prowess is celebrated, somehow the food was always secondary to just the enjoyment I felt being in her home, near to her; listening to her talk to my parents and enjoying when she had time and attention for me. Even as I get older and find that I have inherited the 'feeding you as an expression of my love' gene, I cannot recall a single meal at her home, just the outpouring of love and food all intermingled in my memories.

Last time we visited Grandma was in and out of reality, moving without notice beyond a border somehow just out of my reach.  It was at times humorous and then bewildering as I failed to follow her meandering attention, but Grandma's spirit was still the same, somehow even smiling when her words made no sense.   In her mental wanderings the mansion and ballroom which she never had in this life existed for her and even the knowledge that the dementia was taking Grandma away from us didn't erase the wry amusement that someday, as I follow that path perhaps I will also have the trappings of a life of luxury I've never lived.  Perhaps the humor was a way of avoiding the inevitable truth that Grandma would soon be beyond the reach of this reality and was moving ever further away.

I thought I'd made peace with her leaving this life.  After all, she has been not herself for so very long, and in pain and totally dependent on others for her care--a situation she would have found intolerable had she been in her right mind-- for months.  Her death was a release from pain and yet I found myself unable to stop crying.  Though I am no longer young, it is still terribly hard to loose her physical presence in this world, and no matter how well prepared I thought I was, the reality of her death still continues to strike me with horrible force.   For all my philosophy and talk of her being released from pain, I am very much a crying child in my grieving.   I realise these tears are not for her, but for the pain I feel; the hole left in me by her absence.

So I choose to remember in my tears.  The lovely gifted dresses, the birthday parties at her home (Peter's birthday?) the books she just knew I would love because she had loved them so.  Even with so many grandkids, she knew what made me tick and made sure I had a book or two every time we came over.  The smell of walnuts in the backyard, the christmas boxes full of oranges and nuts and the fruitcake, the smell of the silk tree in the front yard, all of those say 'grandma'.  I still think Davis air smells of its own unique self, and associate that smell with Grandma, with traveling the 12 hours form Oregon to pour out of the station wagon under the shade of the mimosa tree to greet our loving grandparents, rejoice in their company and bask in their love.  Even when we lived close enough to visit often, I would still cry at saying goodbye; I've never been good at those.  The image of the two of them smiling together would stay in my mind through the ride home, cheering me with their constancy towards each other.

It is this image of the two of them standing at the doorway of 821 which will remain with me.  Grandma and Grandpa, hand in hand, leaning a little on each other as they bid us goodbye.  Together.