I Miss My Grandma
February 3, 2025
It has just been over a month since we lost my mom’s mom. I would have never called her my best friend, but we were close. It is funny how losing someone makes you appreciate even when they were unkind to you, even the things that you once were annoyed by, even the times when things didn’t go well. It’s also funny realizing how little you know about the people that you love. I know foods she liked and the way the liked to sleep and how she took her coffee, but I know almost nothing about her childhood and young adulthood. Which also gets me to think, there will be people, someday, that don’t know anything about this part of my life, and will love me deeply.
My grandma was always a really spunky woman. She had a lot of opinions and she could never be wrong. Even if she knew she was wrong, she stood by her thoughts and leaned into them. She was a huge fan of the “clippy” during a time when my sister and I wanted our hair in our faces. She was absolutely the worst driver I have ever experienced, and told me once not to be “so picky” when she was driving down the middle of the road. She was wildly compassionate and loving in spite of being so sassy and hard headed. She couldn’t sit still, and up until the last couple years of her life, she would babysit or sit with people who weren’t doing well and play cards with them or read them books. She loved historical romances that you can get from dollar stores, and hated when money was spent on her. She often returned Christmas gifts because of this. I sent her flowers once and she was overjoyed ( she told me multiple times how much she loved them ) but told me to never do it again because it was a waste of money. When I was little, she had this baby pink trailer home that I remember staying at shortly after my parents divorced. We watched the fox and the hound and I slept in a purple oversized night shirt. I remember watching the movie on the floor of her cozy home, on plush golden carpet, with wet hair from the bath. That trip I also learned that leather shoes can make your feet smell really bad in the summers. I had these little white and purple sandals, and it was a hot summer, so my little feet were sweaty. She would send me half packages of twizzlers because she knew I liked them and that she couldn’t finish them on her own. This is how I found out that I love a stale twizzler. She would press pretty leaves that she found on walks and then send them to me in cards that she got from her church or craft fairs. She wrote in loopy cursive handwriting that got worse and worse with age. I had her in my phone as G-ma when I was in middle school, and she thought it was what it was actually called her, so for years after that she would call and leave a message saying “it’s your g-ma” - I hope I still have some of those saved. She had this same blue couch with her for years and years and slept on it for most of its lifetime. She swore it was more comfortable than her bed. She was a very generous woman, she never had much money, and as she aged it grew to be less and less, but she was always sending me money, or giving it away to people she thought needed it more than her. She was entirely tine deaf and had no rhythm at all - I hated sitting next to her at church because she would clap at the most random moments and sing loudly off key and with no regard to any kind of time signature. When she was younger, she loved the scent Moonlit Path from Bath & Body Works and that smell still makes me think of her. They don’t make it anymore, but they make a similar smell that still sends me back to that little pink trailer home. She burned incense all the time and it gave me a headache, but now that I smell any kind of intense it reminds me of her. There was a shop that I went into, in Omaha, a couple years back and they were burning incense and I almost bought her some, it reminded me so much of her. I wish I would have.
