Family Memory (XXIX) – Granny

My dad’s grandma (Granny) on his mom’s side lived past 100. She was healthy enough to live at home with my paternal grandparents until she was 95 or 96–I think. I don’t really have memories of that. My memories of Granny were the visits to see her in the Americana Nursing Home–because at some point she broke a hip after Papa Dietz died and Nana couldn’t take care of her (somewhere around 1969-70 I reckon). I know my dad went over more often but with us kids, it was less often.

I know we went over on Christmas’ Eve each year–I have the two little kid memories you’d expect…being antsy for getting home to open presents and sitting in her wheelchair and riding around her room/the hall in front of it because wheelchairs were cool. The other thing I remember–and realize now it isn’t weird or strange…just a stage of life, is that her skin was very dry and she had a smell/scent that is always the same around the elderly…but when you are six or seven, it’s just weird/strange–you don’t understand how human bodies change with time.

I also remember my grade school’s administrator permitting my class to go sing Happy Birthday to her with a big cake on her 100th birthday. I remember nothing about the day–my ‘memories’ come from seeing photos. I know Mr. Deniston made a calligraphic card for her, but that’s really about it.

I had to go look up the date of her birthday–1/5/78. 1878. 144 years ago. Weird to think she is old enough to remember the people who actually founded places like Carbondale and Marion, that her dad founded what was once (maybe still is) the largest Methodist church in downstate IL…or that she had uncles die in the Civil War–surviving to go on to become judges, professors, etc.

It goes back to Henry, the other person I remember from the 19th century. My sister and I–we’re the last who would remember Granny now as a living person rather than as someone as a subject of a blog post.

–As something added in now a while after writing the initial draft…I don’t recall Granny ever being mad. She was always talking, always happy. It was a lot like my memories of Uncle Don and visiting him when Erick was an infant. He was happy, content to watch baseball and enjoy the day–but he did not fear death. He was clear on that. He said he was the last of his circle of friends, last of his siblings, that there was ‘no one left’ here, that he’d be reunited soon enough, but that in the meantime, he just wanted to savor daily existence. I wonder if Granny felt the same way, wonder what she thought of my grandmother dying before her–how do you think of death when you are 100?

So…a bit bittersweet on the memory this time around.