Memento Mori

M2 this weekend dug out the necklaces from Great-Gramma’s birthday, which was about two weeks before she died. Blue, red, pink, purple. It made me weepy all over again. She brought them to me in a jumbled mess, as that’s what little girls do with play necklaces. I carefully untangled them, wrapped them like I wrap my yarn to keep it from tangling & waited until she wasn’t looking. Then I went and hid them in my little hide-y memento spot (is there anyone whose mother doesn’t have a hide-y memento spot for odd sentimentals in their sock & underwear drawers? I at least came by it honestly…).

I don’t have a lot from my Gramma H, but her stories and silverware (and the children’s necklaces that were scattered about the tables for her 92nd birthday). Our formal silver was her beloved “Auntie Skeeter’s” (her real name was Viola, but she was Skeeter to us ‘uns). Our daily silverware is the silverware my Mom grew up with, right down to the rattle-y dinner knife dubbed by her father “The Joker.” The night before Gramma died, I put my voice recorder in my purse so next time I saw her I could capture the stories one last time. They always say do it now — and I was going to — and now I’ve been made an example of why to just do it. She died early the next morning.

Here are some of the stories she told a lot in her later years.

She crossed the Snoqualmie Pass before there was really any pass there, and being car sick on the ride. Her father had TB, and so they moved to Arizona for a while? For winters? The pass at that point was mostly switchbacks (hence the being car sick). They had modified the car, a la covered wagon, so that there was a place where their silverware folded out, and the back folded down into a bed.

One time as they were going over the Gorge, at the time a hand-pulled ferry, the rope that crossed from one side of the Gorge to the other snapped & sent the car on the ferry downstream. The women & children set up camp for the night while “the menfolk” went down river to try to rescue the runaway ferry. Eventually every one made it back safe & sound but that was rather a lot of excitement.

When my mommy was growing up, they apparently lived in a house that had a staircase from the upstairs bedrooms that came to a stop at the bottom with a door. One time her two oldest (boys both), slid down the stairs & into the closed door. She used to tell this one when my little girls were being particularly full of energy.

Once my (step)Grandfather took her fishing. Once. Because she won a prize for landing the biggest salmon on that trip. I’m not sure he ever quite forgave her for that. She certainly didn’t go on anymore fishing trips. He always looked a little peeved when the story came up. As well as a little proud of her. They retired & traveled all over the world “caravaning”. They drove around South Africa, they drove around Australia & New Zealand. They drove all over the US (continental & otherwise),Canada, Mexico, &, I think, parts of South America. I remember they came up to Calgary for Christmas one year. I couldn’t have been much older than M1. She made divinity. And taught me how to floss my teeth.

Every now & again she’d pet my hair & say I had my Grandfather’s hair, so thick & the same color. He was a truck driver (from the farms to the market… I think) and labor organizer. That was such a long time before me, I didn’t hear so much about him from her.

Every time she saw us, she’d say, “You’re doing a real good job with those girls.” When she got sick this last time, I got a chance to tell her, knowing what was likely coming soon, that I loved her. And she, I think knowing also, returned the sentiment to me, but I didn’t get a chance to tell her back that she did good with my mama too. That last bit of something I realized I wanted to tell her went into my purse with the voice recorder.