I got the call from my mom last Thursday. My grandma, Reba Davison, had passed away at 2 am in her sleep. I don't know why i took it so hard, cuz after all, she WAS 98, but at first i was ok...i mean, isn't that how we all want to go...live to a ripe old age and then go peacefully in our sleep...plus, on the day my grandma died..there was a horrible tornado that killed 8 people, some of them children in North Carolina, so who am i to feel bad; my grandma almost made it to her goal of 100...
And i was fine, for a while, until last Saturday when i went to the funeral home and saw her in her casket...that's when it became real to me and i realized, "this is final, she is not coming back." I started thinking back to when i heard she was planning her funeral (over 10 years ago)...i was kidding her about it..."your not planning on going anywhere soon, i hope"...and she, in her very Quaker no nonsense way said that she just wanted to be prepared, just in case, but she wasn't planning on going anywhere until she was at least 100...which was how we refered to her age when anyone asked...my grandma was never ashamed to tell people her age...she was 50, then she was 60 until she got to 95, then her age officially became "almost 100."
So that's what i was thinking when i looked at her, so silent, in her very no frills casket which she personally picked out. They had pink lipstick and finger nail polish on her which made me laugh because my grandma would never have allowed that in her life but it did look very nice on her...i thought about all the trials and tribulations she had survived growing up in a very poor family of nine kids where they were lucky if they had horses, otherwise they walked everywhere, my grandma survived the great depression, the death of her parents and all of her sisters and brothers, 2 husbands, and every single one of her best friends but could not survive the loss of her child (two months ago)...they aren't sure what exactly took her out but i think it was a broken heart.
My grandma use to tell us grandkids about the one famous actress she had known and use to occasionally babysit for when she lived in Des Moines, Iowa by the name of Cloris Leachman. This was back in the early 70's when Cloris Leachman had just won an Oscar and was in a hit television show called Phylis...we had a hard time believing her, "OUR GRANDMA from Mason City had actually met some one famous?"...but sure enough, one day in the 90's my grandma actually wrote Cloris Leachman a letter and when Cloris was doing a show in Minneapolis she actually took my grandma to dinner and gave her a couple of tickets to her show...the picture of her and Cloris was displayed proudly in her front room til just before she died...just so she could show it off with a "i told you so"...it's one of the few pictures i have of her with a smile on her face...being a no nonsense quaker she wasn't the kind of person who would get in touch with her emotions...where i'm sobbing like a baby as i type this i already know how my grandma would handle the death of someone she loved...when her second husband died in 1968 my mother said she could come live with us for a while and grandma said no, she needed to go home and face her new life without a husband head on...and she did...she went back to school in the early 60's when most women didn't go to college at all...she was in her 50's and to give you an idea of how rare that was, she made the front page of the newspaper...she took on city hall in the 80's and took on members of her family when she thought they weren't acting the way she thought they should...which was often in those years...yeah, she wasn't afraid of giving her opinion and did to just about anyone who crossed her path, the mailman, the neighbors, cops, didn't matter...she was staying for a week with us when my dad once came home late from work and complained about how noisy he had been when he came in through the door and my dad said "that's where i got you Reba, i came in through the window."
But she mellowed out in her final 10 years and when you came to visit, she made it impossible for you to leave, she'd give you anything she had just so you would stay a few more minutes, and it got so you couldn't get out of there under an hour...and, i'm SUCH A MORON! REALLY, WHAT WAS MORE IMPORTANT THEN SPENDING SOME TIME WITH MY GRANDMA?! Here she was, in her 90's and i'm watching the clock thinking "here's that same story again"...but you know what...i'd give every last cent i had just so i could hear her tell it again, right now...after we went to her graveside service we went to a little cafe she would have liked and when i went back one more time to her grave she was already buried and there was fresh soil over her casket and just like that...my grandma was gone.
Since Saturday i've had moments where i just start crying like when i heard a Chrismas Carol played while i was shopping and then i got it in my head to ask God for a sign that my grandma was ok...maybe a bunch of robins could chirp out one of her favorite tunes out of the 70's like "knock three times" by Tony Orlando and Dawn or something bizarre like that...but i haven't gotten a sign yet...and i have to accept that i may never get a sign...although, in the past few years there has been some fighting in my family and certain members of my family haven't talked or seen each other in two years, BUT this past Saturday, our entire family gathered together in unity to say goodbye to grandma, and you know what, maybe that's better then a sign.
And i was fine, for a while, until last Saturday when i went to the funeral home and saw her in her casket...that's when it became real to me and i realized, "this is final, she is not coming back." I started thinking back to when i heard she was planning her funeral (over 10 years ago)...i was kidding her about it..."your not planning on going anywhere soon, i hope"...and she, in her very Quaker no nonsense way said that she just wanted to be prepared, just in case, but she wasn't planning on going anywhere until she was at least 100...which was how we refered to her age when anyone asked...my grandma was never ashamed to tell people her age...she was 50, then she was 60 until she got to 95, then her age officially became "almost 100."
So that's what i was thinking when i looked at her, so silent, in her very no frills casket which she personally picked out. They had pink lipstick and finger nail polish on her which made me laugh because my grandma would never have allowed that in her life but it did look very nice on her...i thought about all the trials and tribulations she had survived growing up in a very poor family of nine kids where they were lucky if they had horses, otherwise they walked everywhere, my grandma survived the great depression, the death of her parents and all of her sisters and brothers, 2 husbands, and every single one of her best friends but could not survive the loss of her child (two months ago)...they aren't sure what exactly took her out but i think it was a broken heart.
My grandma use to tell us grandkids about the one famous actress she had known and use to occasionally babysit for when she lived in Des Moines, Iowa by the name of Cloris Leachman. This was back in the early 70's when Cloris Leachman had just won an Oscar and was in a hit television show called Phylis...we had a hard time believing her, "OUR GRANDMA from Mason City had actually met some one famous?"...but sure enough, one day in the 90's my grandma actually wrote Cloris Leachman a letter and when Cloris was doing a show in Minneapolis she actually took my grandma to dinner and gave her a couple of tickets to her show...the picture of her and Cloris was displayed proudly in her front room til just before she died...just so she could show it off with a "i told you so"...it's one of the few pictures i have of her with a smile on her face...being a no nonsense quaker she wasn't the kind of person who would get in touch with her emotions...where i'm sobbing like a baby as i type this i already know how my grandma would handle the death of someone she loved...when her second husband died in 1968 my mother said she could come live with us for a while and grandma said no, she needed to go home and face her new life without a husband head on...and she did...she went back to school in the early 60's when most women didn't go to college at all...she was in her 50's and to give you an idea of how rare that was, she made the front page of the newspaper...she took on city hall in the 80's and took on members of her family when she thought they weren't acting the way she thought they should...which was often in those years...yeah, she wasn't afraid of giving her opinion and did to just about anyone who crossed her path, the mailman, the neighbors, cops, didn't matter...she was staying for a week with us when my dad once came home late from work and complained about how noisy he had been when he came in through the door and my dad said "that's where i got you Reba, i came in through the window."
But she mellowed out in her final 10 years and when you came to visit, she made it impossible for you to leave, she'd give you anything she had just so you would stay a few more minutes, and it got so you couldn't get out of there under an hour...and, i'm SUCH A MORON! REALLY, WHAT WAS MORE IMPORTANT THEN SPENDING SOME TIME WITH MY GRANDMA?! Here she was, in her 90's and i'm watching the clock thinking "here's that same story again"...but you know what...i'd give every last cent i had just so i could hear her tell it again, right now...after we went to her graveside service we went to a little cafe she would have liked and when i went back one more time to her grave she was already buried and there was fresh soil over her casket and just like that...my grandma was gone.
Since Saturday i've had moments where i just start crying like when i heard a Chrismas Carol played while i was shopping and then i got it in my head to ask God for a sign that my grandma was ok...maybe a bunch of robins could chirp out one of her favorite tunes out of the 70's like "knock three times" by Tony Orlando and Dawn or something bizarre like that...but i haven't gotten a sign yet...and i have to accept that i may never get a sign...although, in the past few years there has been some fighting in my family and certain members of my family haven't talked or seen each other in two years, BUT this past Saturday, our entire family gathered together in unity to say goodbye to grandma, and you know what, maybe that's better then a sign.
2 comments:
I just want to say Cindy I'm sorry for your loss.... you know my Grandma died back in 1993. I never grieved her then.. maybe since I was in high school and too busy with the drama of being a teen. Or perhaps I never stopped grieving internally. Well, when I had my 2nd son Spencer, just this past January ( I can't believe a year has gone by), I started getting feelings that someone was in the room with me... not scary.. a very familial since. Then I started finding things in other places, started smelling fresh brewed coffee in the back room of my oldest boy... well the scent I remember most from my Grandma was the smell of her coffee brewing.
Anyway, I could go on forever but long story short, a butterfly showed up outside around my van when I was at my worst mood one night. It circled the van, circled around me and my son.. and then poof.. Gone... I encountered these orange and black butterflies quite a bit and decided to get a tattoo honoring my grandma. It is a butterfly with the name "Sadie" below it. I think our passed on family members are always with us but we don't always pick up on the signs. Next time you see a bird outside your window, or swear you turned a light off and it's on... maybe it's your Grandma just saying HI I'm here. I thought this would comfort you. Happy Holidays.
Amy, Saint Francis WI
Hi Amy, i just want to thank you for your beautiful email concerning grandmas...and i think that is so cool that you got a "sign"...certainly i was hoping that i would receive a "sign" although i'm sure it wouldn't have anything to do with coffee, since my grandma wasn't that big of a coffee drinker...maybe a smell of bleach since grandma was a big believer in bleach, or even the smell of cabbage since grandma ate that every day for the last 30 years of her life...she said it would make her live longer...wow...there's gotta be something to that...although, i can't stand cabbage...i wonder how much longer i will live if i eat Chicken McNuggets everyday...since, i eat, well...chicken McNuggets everyday...
I was extremely lucky to have seen my grandma in the nursing home 2 weeks before her death...i saw her two days in a row, and both days she said something to the effect of "get me out of here"...i regret now that i didn't just say, "ok grandma, let's go" and bust her out of there...my mom put her in there this past March because it was obvious her body was breaking down even if her spirit wasn't but grandma kept firing everybody mom hired to help her..."hi Mrs. Davison, i'm here to..."
"Your fired."
The last Monday of her life when a blod clot hit her brain stem and she couldn't move, the nursing home thought that she had gone into a coma and sent her to the hospital...after the nurses and the transport team put her in a hospital bed, she suddenly woke up, looked around at everyone and said "your fired."
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