mortality & memorial

i realized earlier today that wednesday was the eleventh anniversary of my grandmother’s death. i find it interesting that i’d remembered it was looming earlier in the week and then remembered that it had passed today, but was completely unware of it on the day of. what was certain was that i had been out of sorts at work all during that day. i was also sure that when i came home and was faced with an evening alone in my apartment, it was the last thing i needed. luckily, my friends were there to keep me company, no matter how subconscious my desire to be around the living was.
gummy, as i called her for the first half of my life, was my only living grandparent. both my father’s parents had died in the early sixties of alcohol related illnesses; my maternal grandfather had run his car off the road when my mother was only twenty-one. she was my only link to my family’s history. i treasured her more than anyone. i still do. but, her death scarred me. i still pick at that wound today. if i let myself think much beyond the surface of her existence in my life, i have a difficult time pulling myself out of the sorrow which follows.
i remember so many specifics about her: how she always had a package of chicklets in her purse; the way the soft, wrinkled skin of her cheek felt; the can of mandarine oranges she always had in her cupboard when i’d go to visit; her gravelly voice; her small, strong body; the fight she had with my mother outside my bedroom door when i was four years old — she wanted to come in to comfort me, but mom wanted me to learn a lesson; how, even when i was young and energetic, she could out-walk me so far that i’d have to call out and ask her to wait up.
the one thing i wish i didn’t remember about her is the way she looked at her viewing. i wish with all my heart that the last time i had seen her was while she was asleep in the bed she died in, not laid out on the table in the funeral home. they had brushed her hair back from her face and put makeup on her; two things id’ never seen in my entire life. i understand a person’s need to see the dead, to say goodbye, to obtain closure; but, that was not how i wanted to remember her. it’s taken me a long, long time to have that one, last memory fade. it hurt me to see her like that. to hear my uncle say “she’s so cold” after kissing her forehead.
eleven years i’ve lived without her in my life. it seems so short sometimes. i believe it is because her presence in my life was so pervasive that every memory from the first to that day in 1990 were larger, more important because she was part of them than any in the eleven years which have passed without her.
i love you, gummy. wherever you are. i will always love you.