A Great Lady

I usually try to avoid using first names on the Internet. I don't know why really. It seems, now that I think of it, silly to be afraid of naming the people in my life to protect their privacy. I wanted to pay tribute to my Grandmother today, so I decided to break my own rule. How can I tell the world how great she was, if I didn't share her name? I called her Grandma Bea.

Grandma Bea, can I have a cookie? Grandma Bea, will you tell me a story? Grandma Bea, will you teach me how to play? Grandma Bea, will you teach me to knit and sew and hook and garden and......? Yes. She always said yes. Grandma was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse for many, many years. Her rural pupils met her during their first day of school in first grade, and she would continue to teach them every year, until they graduated from grade eight. Eight years with the same teacher. She became like a mother to many of them, I suppose. Evidence of this appeared long after the schoolhouse closed. Her 90th birthday party was as much a class reunion as it was a birthday celebration. Several of her students visited her at the nursing home where she lived for the last few years. How many of your teachers do you visit? Surely it was a testament to the enormous impact she had had on these children...now seniors themselves.

I don't remember Grandma teaching. I only remember Grandma at home. She lived in the house beside ours. I remember seeing her kneeling in her garden most summer days. She had the most glorious garden. Dahlia's as big as dinner plates, I often heard people say. She had Hollyhocks growing at the front of the house, an Iris bed, Gladiolas that always turned up at the local fair, and Black Eyed Susans lining the hillside. She tried to grow nearly every kind of rose that the horticulturists could hybrid. Maybe she liked the roses because they lasted longer. Their thorns protected them from the prying hands of three young grandchildren who loved nothing more than to present her with a lovely bouquet of flowers...often from her own garden. I never, ever heard her say a word about it. She would smile and hug us and say "Oh thank you!"

During the long winters, Grandma spent her time hooking rugs and wall hangings, darning socks, painting, writing and reading. She would sit in her green armchair, the table beside it overflowing with projects and books, and quietly work beneath the lamplight. She would be sitting there nearly every time we came over. Any day we were too ill to go to school, we would be whisked across the yard and take up a position on the living room couch. Grandma would pour glasses of Ginger Ale to flatten on the kitchen counter and dig out the saltines from their place in the cupboards. She would pull the chair over to the sink and stand on it to reach the horse liniment in the shelf over the window there. I remember her rubbing my neck with that horrid-smelling stuff and then wrapping an old sock around it to ease my swollen glands and tonsils. I'd sleep on the couch as she worked her fingers with a hook or needle, always creating or re-creating.

I remember climbing into her lap when I was a little girl. She would always drag her fingers through my hair and it would so relax me that I would close my eyes and, I'm sure on occasion I fell asleep. She would tell stories about Dad as a little boy, or about his sister Anne's shenanigans at church. She believed in stories, but she preferred the kind that were told rather than read. She held to the belief of strong family roots tightened by knowledge passed through the telling of stories. Knowing someone, is about knowing their stories. To truly know someone, you must listen not just to what they say, but to what other people say about them. To understand them, you have to hear about their adventures in the third person so that the stories are not slanted by modesty or boastfulness or hurt or humour. There is much truth in perception. Some argue, in fact, that perception is the truth.

Grandma was a great lady. I've heard that a lot in the last few days. My mom says that Grandma was the greatest lady that she ever knew. I have to agree. A couple of the nurses at the home said the same thing, the neighbour who visited yesterday said it, the preacher said it, and one of her students said it yesterday. "She was a great lady!" She was. She was the absolute best. She was my friend, my teacher, my confidante, my cheerleader, my playmate, my compass. She was my "soft place" in a world where so often I learned by bumping and bruising.

My grandma passed away on Thursday morning at 2:30 am. I was with her, holding her hand, reading her one of the stories she had written. The story was about a billy goat that came to the farm when she was a little girl. I like to think that when she passed, she was a young girl trying to coax a billy goat down from the roof of the shed with a handful of oats. I like to think that when she passed, she looked down and saw me there with her and knew how deeply she was loved by me. I had told her a million times during my life, but words sometimes just don't seem to be enough. How do you convey that kind of emotion with mere words? You don't, I suppose. I guess, it is something that can only be expressed through deeds rather than words. I suppose it is something that can only be felt. Like fingers running through your hair, as you sit in the comfort of your grandma's lap.