axolotl9 | one generation less

My grandmother died this morning.

She'd been up and down since my grandfather died in 2005. They were married for 65 years, which is a long time by anyone's measure. A lot went out of her when he died.

The last year or so she'd been suffering from vertebral degeneration, which caused pressure on her spine. The pain was so bad that she was on a Fentanyl patch, which had the unfortunate side effect of also interfering with her mental acuity much of the time.

My mother called this morning and said "This is the call you didn't want to get," to tell me that she'd taken a bad turn last night. She finished that conversation with "And the next call you get from me will be the one you really don't want to get." Well, I got that call 15 minutes ago.

I much prefer to remember Grandma as she was when I was younger. She was the youngest of my grandparents, having been born in 1920. This led to what we called a stellar alignment in 1995 at my wedding, when I was 25, my mother was 50 and my grandmother 75.

Grandma did a lot with my sister and me when we were younger. She had cut back to teaching part-time when she turned 55, which meant she was frequently available for field trips and other school activities. I remember multiple tide-pool trips with Grandma guiding my class, pointing out the interesting stuff. It always seemed cool that my grandma knew more than my teachers did about some things. (Of course, she was a college professor and they were grade-school teachers. I did not, however, distinguish between the two at the time.)

As I grew up, Grandma continued to be supportive. And she did it with a sense of humor, too. For my sixteenth birthday I received a card with a rather larger than usual birthday check... but also editorial commentary on the inside. See, it had pictures of all the sorts of things a sixteen-year-old might want to do - playing sports, driving, playing video games, going to rock concerts, riding a motorcycle... but that last one was X-ed out and had a large "NO!" written underneath it. (As I recall the birthday check ended up going for an eardrum-rupturing stereo for the pickup truck I ended up driving for the next 8 years.)

Then when I got booted out of UCSC the first time, and the second time, she helped convince my parents not to write me off. Of course, she did that by pointing out how long my dad took to complete *his* bachelor's degree... but hey, whatever works. I managed to do in eight years what took him nine. Me for the win!

I'm also glad that Grandma got to meet my daughter, and that my daughter got to meet her great-grandparents on one side. (Rather like my situation when younger - my father's maternal grandparents were still alive when I was young.) And oddly enough, my daughter is the same age I was when the last of my great-grandparents died.

I'll raise a toast to her later, but for now I would conclude by saying:
Goodbye, Grandma. I enjoyed every minute I got to spend with you, and I'm sorry there won't be more.

Marian Mae (Enzler) Reeve, 1920-2008