Celebration of a Life

I am leaving little room in my life for sadness these days. Bad timing, then, for the anniversary of my grandmother's death. I can't quite understand the tradition of remembering a person on the anniversary of their death instead of the anniversary of their birth, especially someone like my Gram. She was so full of joy and gratitude all the time, her life was about focusing on the good and the great and relishing the challenges of the bad. So in honour of her, the woman for whom I have named this blog (for those who thought it was some sort of philosophical idea, I am literally the granddaughter of a woman called Fate), I am going to revel in the happy memories I have of her.

Gram loved everyone. I don't mean in the sense that some sorority girls, who kiss everyone hello and always cheerfully say "love ya" at the end of a phone conversation, love everyone. She really loved people. She always put everyone else's needs before her own, always looked after everyone else's interests. Gram could always see the other side to the story. She took empathy to levels unseen by most - I witnessed her on more than one occasion utter her favourite phrase "God love them" while watching footage of criminals being taken into custody. And she meant it, she felt everyone's pain and genuinely believed everyone was worthy of compassion and kindness. What was most remarkable about her compassion was that it didn't seem to be born out of some lefty-guilt, Christian obligation or sense of moral righteousness. It was just her. Kindness seemed to be her base instinct, simply the essence of who she was.

Knowing where she came from made Gram's nature even harder to explain. She was never one to be dealt an easy hand. Put up for adoption at birth, she was born out of wedlock to a married woman and her teen-aged lover. Because her father was a minor and both her parents Irish nationals, she was never permitted to know anything more about them. She was adopted by a moderately wealthy, childless American couple from Cape Cod. Her parents had a biological son shortly after, and Gram was regarded as little more than an overreaction to perceived infertility. When she was thirteen, she discovered she was adopted when her mother proclaimed "No wonder your real parents didn't want you." Her first husband abandoned her to set up home with his mistress and she was left to raise three young children on her own. After she married the man I would know as my grandfather, she suffered several miscarriages and a still birth, years of unemployment, poverty, and severe alcoholism. She was excommunicated from the church she loved and rejected by her in-laws as a 'ruined' woman. Her face bore the lines of these tribulations, but she would have never uttered a word of complaint to anyone.

Gram's heart was soft, but her back was broad.

The Gram I knew gave away nothing of the life described above. She was short and round, rosy-cheeked, with freckles and soft red hair. She was almost always smiling, and not just with her mouth but with her whole face. She worked as a volunteer at food pantries and charity shops. She was the matriarch of the local AA groups (she travelled to most groups within a 20 mile radius and attended a meeting almost every day). Her house was always full of motherless children, lost souls looking for someone to love them. She was seemingly inexhaustible in her affection and attention, finding time and space for anyone who asked her for it. For as long as I can remember, she had one or all of her children/grandchildren living in her home.

Gram may have loved everyone, but I always liked to think that she and I had something special. I was sure we were kindred spirits - soul mates. I have written before about my disconnection from my family, my feelings of otherness. With Gram that never existed. She understood me before I even knew there was something to understand. We both devoured books, often staying up all night because we just couldn't stop reading. I loved to look at her shelves and see what titles we shared and which ones I could borrow. She watched the news and read the paper, uncommon activities in my family, and in general conversations she challenged my ideas of politics and citizenship. She loved the opera and classical music, and she closed her eyes when she was moved by a crescendo. I would never pretend to be the kind of person Gram was, but she has helped me to love the person that I am. All of the things that made me weird to the rest of my family made me special to her.

Everything she did was a reinforcement of her love and support. When I was struggling to pay for college, Gram sent me checks and pretended she didn't know what I was talking about when I tried to pay her back. She called me "sweetie-pie" and "punkin," and kissed me gently on the forehead when she said hello. When I told her I cried sometimes because the world was so unfair, she cried with me and asked me what I was going to do to change it. She told me that my heart was too big for most people to understand, but that she understood it. When I left home to move to Ireland, she gave Max her father's cuff-links to welcome him into our family. She whispered to me later that she was glad she got to meet the man I would love forever. I didn't realise then that was going to be the last time I saw her. Maybe she did.

At her funeral, an event that filled a church hall +overflow, the officiant called for those who felt moved to stand up and share their feelings about Gram. The service went on for what seemed like hours. People I had never seen before stood up and told the same stories. Gram was the best friend they have ever had. Gram came over in the middle of the night just because they needed to talk. Gram taught them the meaning of kindness. Gram was like the mother/sister/grandmother they never had. Gram stopped them from drinking. Gram saved their life. Gram was the best thing that ever happened to them... At first I was almost angry. She was mine! I didn't even know these people and I had to share my grief with them. How could she be all of those things to other people when she had been all of those things to me? When I stopped kicking my feet and pounding my fists I was able to see those statements for what they really were - a testament to the woman I had known and loved so well. Proof that I had not seen some skewed vision of the grandmother I had put on a pedestal, but of the woman who really existed.

I didn't make it home in time to say goodbye to Gram. She died two hours before I boarded the plane to come back to her. My sister was holding her hand when she went. The week before I spoke to her on the phone and she told me that if she died, she didn't want me "wasting my precious life flying around the world to watch her get put into the ground." She told me to go out to the ocean and say goodbye, and that she would see me again - "not too soon," she hoped. I ignored her - probably for the first time in my life. It has been four years since Gram died. I am glad to say my memories of her are as strong as the they have ever been. This post does little to express what she has meant to me, but I am sure she would think it was enough.

I think today I'll take a trip to the beach...