Just a few more of these lovely posts left, I'll post another later today and one more tomorrow. What an amazing week of posts it's been. I'm so honored to get to share these memories here.
Your posts have been a real comfort during this first week with my grandfather. Originally, I had thought your memories would be a wonderful tribute, a way of showing him that there is so much that lives on long after our time together. So much.
He isn't ready to read them yet, the news from the doctor on Monday too fresh. And now I realize that these posts are just as much for me. To remind me to be patient, to go slow, to not forget for one second that we will still be making memories right up to the end, whenever and wherever that end may come. So thank you for this amazing gift, dear friends. Thank you so very much.
First up today, a post from my dear friend Tracy who, years ago now, after my mom passed away, reached out and made me so much less alone in the world.
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From Tracy Bartley
That's my Gramma May on the right. My dad looking up at her. My uncle peeking between her and her sister Irene. I love her smile in this picture. It is so full of life. I never knew this smile. Afer this picture her eldest child, and only daughter, died of cancer. After this picture her husband died of a heart defect.
I spent a lot of time with my Gramma. She was a constant in my life. She lived in a little town close to our little city, and my dad doted over her as I have learned many middle sons do with their mothers. She was a strong woman. She kept a perfect vegetable garden, played a perfect game of cribbage, and always had marshmallow peanut butter squares waiting for me. As a child we would visit her on the weekends. We would play in her garden while my dad played cribbage with her in the kitchen. As a teen, I would take the bus to visit her. Have lunch at the Chinese restaurant around the corner from her little pink house and sit at the table she always sat at when she ate there. As an adult I would visit her whenever I went back home. It was part of the routine of my visits. By the time she met my girls my Dad, her middle son, had died of that same genetic heart defect and she had sold the little pink house and moved into a convalescent home. She died shortly after her 93rd birthday. My cousins cleared out her room, and sent me her set of Pyrex mixing bowls, and bags and bags of old photographs, including this one.
I keep this picture pinned to the board above my desk. I am trying to get to know this smile.