Today my grandmother would have been 95 years old. Unfortunately, she never made it past 88 -- still quite an impressive accomplishment considering she was pretty active and healthy right til the end. Well, nearly the end. My mom called me two days before she passed and asked if I would give a eulogy. Never having done it before I was freaked out and nervous, but immediately said yes. I knew my Grandma would've gotten a kick out me talking. She thought I was a bit of superstar (as is part of the grandma job description), plus she liked me better than my brother. That night, I woke at 3am and in the pitch black of my bedroom, began furiously writing in my journal. The speech just flowed. I made a few edits, but mostly it dropped out of my head onto the paper. Just a few days later, through puffed-shut eyes and snot-streaked face I managed to choke out these words:
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I have the world's worst handwriting,
but am pretty proud I cranked this out in the dark!
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June 4, 2007
Grandma Mickey
My Grandma, like many grandmothers was a sweet little old lady. She baked the best oatmeal cookies, always had candy in her candy dish and would reliably tell her grandchildren how precious we were. Yes, she was pretty much what you’d expect from a little old lady – except when she was cursing like a sailor! Which I loved by the way.
But over the years, she showed me on many occasions what set her apart from others and made our relationship one I’ll always remember. I call them “lessons a la Mickey”. Today I’d like to share a few of them with you.
You are never alone if you have a book.
My grandmother and I shared a deep passion for reading. Our phone conversations covered a variety of topics, but they always ended with one of us searching for a pencil to write down the title of the other’s latest treasure. Most recently we discussed a book called “Water for Elephants” in which a 90-year-old man recounts his days on a circus train. We both loved this story as it showed life from two perspectives – bringing our two perspectives together – despite our 58 year age difference. Books always did that for us.
Last week, hours before going into the hospital, she told her caregiver she couldn’t believe she was still on the library waiting list for a book I’d recommended weeks earlier. She was so excited to read it and thought it must be excellent for there to be a wait on a book that was published 2 years ago. That book is called “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”. It tells the amazing story about female bonding through the generations in 19th century China. To celebrate the life of my grandmother, her love for reading and our own female bonds, I’m giving each woman in our family a copy of “Snow Flower” in her honor. I placed a copy of it with my grandmother earlier today. I hope you love it as much as I did and feel compelled to pass on your copy to someone you care about.
Marriage advice.
10 ½ years ago, I married Eddie Virden. At that point, my grandparents had been married about 60 years so naturally I asked my grandmother for marriage advice. I was thinking something along the lines of communication is key, laugh a lot or that she’d tell me it’s imperative to find common interests. No, not my grandmother – she told me the secret to a happy marriage was to Always Sleep Naked. You are probably thinking what I was thinking – EWWWW! But she didn’t say it to be funny or sarcastic – which I thought was the best part. She was actually being serious.
Appreciating the small stuff.
My whole life she told me how she and my grandfather used to marvel at me as a baby – their first grandchild. They’d say – Did you see that?? She blinked!! In recent years she repeatedly told me what a great mom she thought I was – just like my mother. Being around her was like having a shot of courage, a shot of vodka and a shot of Botox. You just felt great about yourself. She thought I was a supermodel, a comic genius and had married the best looking guy in Maryland. She always had her glass half full. And naturally, she adored all her great grandchildren and couldn’t wait to spend time with them. She watched them like a TV show, commenting on their every move. That was the great thing about her -- you always knew what she was thinking. She never held anything back.
One more thing.
There was one time, however, when it turned out she was completely in the dark on a very important aspect of her own life -- which brings me to my final story. This one isn’t really a lesson so much as …well, let me just tell it.
In August 2001, my daughter Gracie was born. I hadn’t planned to name her Grace but my husband Eddie convinced me during labor that it was a better name than the one I’d been thinking of. It was a dirty trick to pull at 8 centimeters, but that’s a different story. I actually agreed to the name mostly because I was absolutely positive that I was about to give birth to a boy.
Anyway, a month or so after Gracie’s birth, my mother was getting something from my grandmother's safe deposit box at the bank. She stumbled across an envelope that she didn’t recognize. Inside was my grandmother’s birth certificate.
As far as my mom or anyone else knew my grandmother’s name for 82 years – had been Miriam. Everyone called her Mickey, but Miriam was her given name. Well, according to her birth certificate that wasn’t the case – her real name was Grace.
You can imagine our shock. Why hadn’t my grandmother mentioned this before? How did my own mother not know? So my mom asked her about it. “Ma, did you know your real name was not Miriam, but really Grace?”
My Grandmother went on to tell the story of when her mother brought her home from the hospital in 1918. You need to know that my Grandma was the 5th of 5 kids – her next closest sibling was 8 years older. Anyway, when her mother came home from the hospital, the neighbor came to meet the newest member of the family – baby Grace. The neighbor said, "Oh... you named her Grace, I was hoping you’d call her Miriam."So, being extraordinarily neighborly, I suppose, they decided to call her Miriam from that day forward. It was her brothers and sisters who gave her the lifelong nickname Mickey.
When asked again why she never said anything about being named Grace, especially considering her new great-granddaughter shared her name – my grandmother replied “I always knew my real name wasn’t Miriam but for some reason I thought it was Bonnie.”
Where that came from we have no idea, but we all got a great laugh that day.
I hope that in these words I’ve read this afternoon, you’ve been able to glimpse the true and loving character of my grandmother. I will miss her stories and her smiles. I will miss her candy dish of Coffee Nips and her potty mouth. And I will definitely miss our own little book club.
She certainly gave new meaning in our family to the words Great Grandma.
