Tuesday Coffee Chat

Who is someone you miss?

I have a few friends I don't get to see often enough, and I miss them. I miss my mom when she's in Florida for several months at a time. I miss Rick and the kids when one of us is away. But, to be honest, I have not had a lot of real loss of loved ones in my life.

There is only one person I think about often and truly miss, and that's my Grandma Alice. I especially miss her in the month of March because her birthday was on St. Patrick's Day.

At my Grandma's funeral I shared that she was the only person in my life who had never disappointed me. She was a tough old gal, but there was no question in my mind how much she loved me.

She was the grandma who had the family dinners where she served everyone while she stood at the kitchen counter to eat (plus she made the best chicken dinner on the planet). We spent the night with my grandma most Saturday nights. We would play double solitaire, watch The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, wind the clock before bed, and take turns sleeping with her. She always woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep and would turn on her lamp to read. She rose before dawn on Sunday mornings to sit at the kitchen table and prepare her Sunday school lesson. Then she took us to church.

My grandma attended a lot of my events, which was nice, but mostly she just welcomed us in her home. I have fond memories of picking and snapping green beans, playing with her dog, and she had the most amazing azalea bush in her backyard. (I transplanted some of it last year and I am praying it survived the winter.)

I have several things of my grandma's that reminds me of her every day. That old clock we used to wind is in my sitting room. I use her metal measuring spoons and measuring cups every time I cook. (I played with those spoons and cups when I was a baby, and now my grandson will get to play with them.) I cook my eggs in her extremely well-seasoned cast iron skillet every morning. My dresser top is filled with all things that were my grandma's ... the antique plates that hold my jewelry, the mirror frame that my mom made when she worked at a frame shop when she was a young woman that held my grandma's makeup, her antique brush and mirror, statues of a man and woman that I have had in every one of my houses, a small framed picture that I retrieved from her house when she went into the nursing home. My most treasured possession is her Bible.

 

One thing I regret is that I didn't talk to her enough. I didn't ask about what she was doing during World War II, how she was raised, things she did for fun when she was a girl, dreams she had, goals she met, etc. I learned a smattering of things about her through the years but I never sat and had an intentional conversation with her about her life. By the time I was really old enough to understand the importance of that, she was aging and conversations were a little difficult.

How I wish she was here so we could just talk.