Granny

Dallas' Granny died last week. She was a feisty, yet forgetful, 85 years old. Her mind wasn't what it once was by the time I met her around this time last year, but there was still plenty of personality to amuse me. Like how she called her daughter's husband, Slough-foot (because he's the kind of person who looks like he's always just stepped in something), how her advice to me at my wedding shower was, "If you will just shut up, you'll never say anything wrong," how she had a cat, originally named Sinatra, a name which she thought was stupid and hard to remember, so she renamed him, "Baby Boy," and would tell us how she'd say, "Baby Boy, where are you?" and he'd come a-running. Dallas and his older brother spent quite a bit of time with Granny when they were young, as she would look after them while their parents worked. She tells stories (sadly, the same ones were often repeated over and over again in the same hour or so visit, a creeping reminder of her mental deterioration) about how they went walking in the woods, or for a ride on a small train, or to the zoo when the boys were younger. She was so tickled by my appreciation for McDonald's (my first non-babysitting job was as a cashier/drive through runner at age 16), as I expressed it to her at our first meeting, that she misremembered that we ate a meal there (rather than at Subway) that day, and always treated McDonald's food as our own private joke. She was quite a plucky lady, and when she was younger and wanted a stone house, she set her husband and her four children the task of digging rocks for it out of the fields on their land, and cementing them to the walls of their home. This house is still standing, in decline, and she lived in it, alone, until the day she died. The street on which it sits is named for her. We've been mourning, and yet offering thanks that she hadn't had to leave her home of 65 years, or her cat, for whom she was making arrangements on her death bed. Rarely does a day pass when we don't make some reference to Granny, whether it's to say, "That's life for ya, Granny," her favorite phrase to attribute to a precocious seven-year old Dallas, or to say, "I'm BO-ORED," her favorite phrase to attribute to her ungrateful youngest grandchildren, or just to tell stories about her, remembering the good times. May she rest in peace, even as her husband, long-dead, will likely be put to work first thing upon their reunion.