I have so many memories from that week. Some memories I don't really want to remember, like finding pieces of her teeth laying in the back porch where she fell. Some memories I'll treasure forever, like being given the moment for my sister & I to run our fingers in her hair one last time. Or every local business in Madison coming up to us to tell us stories of how much they loved her. (Yes, in her 80's, my Grandmother was more of a social butterfly than I am at the age of 28!) Or cleaning her apartment out with my cousins, and seeing she never threw away anything when it came to us. (Because who kept the paper teddy bear with my name written on it that hung on my kindergarten cubicle? Granny.)
One moment that will forever stay etched in my mind is so simple....after leaving moms house the day of the news to go home & pack, as I got in the car my iPod switched to Patty's "The Grandpa I Know"....
I never met my Grandfather. He died of a heart attack a few years before I was born. Ironically, the two of us grandchildren that never met him are the two that are the most like him. Grandpa lived for playing guitar & vintage country music. An avid fan fair goer, and loved to record himself playing music. My cousin Jeremy inherited the guitar skills, and I inherited the massive love (okay, so obsession. For what it's worth, his was an obsession too!) for vintage country music. I may never have had the chance to meet him, but my Granny was sure to tell me repeatedly how much I reminded her of him. Because my Gran was such a hoarder, I've seen every picture probably ever taken of him, have every paper he probably ever signed, and have the letters he wrote her during the war - so I feel like I did know my Grandfather. And thanks again to that love of music - if I ever want to hear him, all I have to do is pop in the tapes he left behind, singing the kind of music my sister scrunches her nose at and I can't get enough of.
My grandparents married when my Granny was 19, in 1946, and were married until his death in 1978, and I never even saw her date anyone else.
When Patty released "The Grandpa I Know", everyone that heard it was moved, myself included. (Especially once you heard her do it live.) But I never fully identified with it. I don't think I honestly was ever as emotionally overcome with a song as I was when this came through my speakers the day my Granny died. While the entire song is incredible, it was these lyrics that hit me:
Grandma was his boyhood bride
He'll be there in her arms tonight
He'll sleep there in her arms tonight
My grandmother knew she wasn't going to be around forever, and apparently though ahead...which I discovered when I found a letter to us in her purse when cleaning out the apartment. Certainly not an easy thing to read, but as we read the page about her being at peace with what happens, and wanting to be with my grandfather again, those lyrics were all I could think of in my mind. Music is a powerful thing...
