Letting Her Go: A Eulogy

The world lost my grandmother on Thanksgiving.  I am infinitely grateful that I was with her, that I could sing to her and hold her hand and brush her hair from her face and get her more pain medicine when she needed it.

She’s irreplacable. 

Here I thought I would share my remarks from her service.

I don’t know if everyone adores their own Grandmother, but everyone adored mine.  Those of us who were lucky enough to have her as ours loved her vigorously and knew her to be the gentlest and warmest soul.

It is only fitting that she left this world on a day when we give thanks.  She embodied so many blessings, and so many reasons to be thankful in all of our lives.

On this December 16^th, when she would have been 97, I propose we all have a Pauline day.  We’ll spend it surrounded by the things that she loved. To get into character, you’ll need to get used to calling everyone you meet, “honey.” If you get frustrated, the worst you can say is, “thunderation,”  and though I’m not exactly sure what it means, it is sort of cathartic to say.  Re-read your favorite pages of Gone With The Wind and watch The Thornbirds, while eating silver-dollar pancakes made of cornbread.  Have roses –pink ones- on your table and cards for solitaire or rummy.  As a child, I thought Saul (which I now know is short for solitaire) was a tiny man living in her deck of cards because she would fuss at Saul and talk about how she beat  “him,” from time to time.    Because of her, I also thought that Arthur was an unwelcomed house guest who came to visit when the weather changed. 

For us girls, on our Pauline Day, we must wear pearls or pretty costume jewelry, lipstick, and a silky blouse even when it’s cold. There must be dancing. She has told me many times that she would rather dance than eat and that she could dance before she could walk. If you don’t have a ballroom nearby, just move some furniture and crank up The Lawrence Welk show. Or sing Somewhere My Love, to yourself, in alto of course.

Now you will have to be sweet to everyone, always, regardless of  how they may treat you.  There can be no snide comments, because she never made any.  This is a tall order, and even more inspiring to me because she didn’t just do it for one day, but every day for almost a hundred years.  Even food. Rather than complain if something tasted awful, she would just say, and only if asked, “Well, I just didn’t care for it.”

One of her greatest regrets in life was that once, while battling typhoid fever, she asked why someone was there to visit her. She later felt this was so rude and even a few months ago told me how much she regretted that fever-induced slip 80 years ago.

It’s tough to be as good as she was, even for a day, because, like the Southern heroines she loved reading about before her vision failed, she was as delicate and beautiful as the things she that loved: like paper thin money tree plants and bone china, yet strong enough to keep her faith and her reserve through great tragedies in her life.

She was gracious, and lovely, but  never  afraid of hard work. As a girl, she rode horses and picked tobacco, but always wore a hat and sleeves to protect her gorgeous skin. She loved being in plays and would have been an actress, but at 20, went to Owensboro to work and send home money during hard times.  She did whatever she could to help her family without complaints. When she finally retired, she sat down at her kitchen table and drew the lines and angles that would become her home in Delaware.  She recently told me she felt that would always be her house, no matter who lived there. 

She loved to tease me about how much I talk, but I never quit bombarding her with questions.  As a child I would ask thinks like, “why do you twiddle your thumbs,” and more recently, “how do I balance work and family,” and I could always count on her for truthful answers and practical advice. 

I hope I get the chance to be a grandmother some day.  I’ll try to have tissues in every coat pocket like she always did, to always wear my lipstick, to wait by the open door when my grandbabies are coming, to be there for all of their special days and hard days too.  I’ll tell them, like she told me, not to put their coats on too early before leaving the house because you’ll feel warmer if you wait until you need it.  I’ll tell them to use Oil of Olay for pretty skin and to take AlkaSelzer liquid gels if they find themselves taking to a cold. I’ll teach them her recipe for squash casserole, coconut pie and cheese grits.  I’ll teach my granddaughters, should I have them, that you can be feminine and tough as nails all at the same time.  I’ll love them madly, like she loved us, and the love she gave me will be in every kiss on their faces.

It was and is such joy to be her granddaughter and pure bliss to spend time with her. The only hard part about being hers and her being mine was that each time I had to pull out of her driveway, from the time I was riding my Flintstones Big Wheel, to my first car, to one with a car seat, I always dreaded leaving her. I always hated letting her go.  And it is so hard to do today. 

But I won’t let go of these memories and of her immeasurable impact on my future. She adored Spring and I will think of her with every new bloom.  In roses and red cardinals. In shiny white hair that always makes my 3-year-old stop to ask, “Is that my Maw?” She will always be in everything pink, and pretty and soft.

Just this summer she shared with me that when she was 13, she was baptized as a girl in the Green River.  She said there were others with her and that they kept a change of clothes at a house nearby. I think about how beautiful she always was and how the sunlight must have looked in her hair and on her face that day. Knowing that she is not a swimmer, I asked her if she was scared to be submerged, water rushing overhead, and she said, “No. Not at all.” 

She was ready to be saved.