As you may have heard, my last grandparent died on Monday. Grandma Rae was 98 years old and perfectly healthy right up until her slight stroke two weeks ago. Her only health issues in the last few years were a deteriorating hip from a previous break, leading to some falls. We decided after the last fall in June that she could no longer safely live on her own, and she was moved into a nursing home.
Nursing home rooms are small. She was lucky enough to have a private room, but still, it’s small. One piece of her furniture fit, my grandpa’s bureau. So what do we do with an apartment full of stuff? My parents have their home fully furnished the way they wanted, I didn’t really have room for any more in my apartment and my sister isn’t really in a position to take any furniture since she lives in a closet in San Francisco. But we can’t just get rid of it. Her furniture is all very nice and most of the pieces are antiques from her family. So I am taking the breakfront and the matching buffet, as well as a small delicate chair and some ginger-jar lamps. I will make them fit.
She also has a lot of art and important pieces from her and my grandpa’s and their families’ travels and vacations and there are many things in her apartment that bring up fond memories. The small yellow jade snuffbox with the bright green stopper was my favorite-favorite thing to look at among the many Asian treasures they collected over the years.
The delicate Dresden ballerinas remind me of the very rare occasions we were allowed in the formal living room at their farmhouse in Door County. She got very angry if you picked them up the wrong way! (You pick them up by the heads, so the china lace doesn’t break) These figurines were made in the 1800s and the factory was destroyed in the war. They are very precious to me and I am so happy my dad allowed me to have them.
The small china cat and kitten curled up by the fireplace. We always went in and petted them when we arrived.
The octagon-shaped glass plates remind me of the yummy ham sandwiches she would make for lunch. She would toast the bread, slather on butter and cut them into four squares.
We always had fruit at her house too. My grandpa grew up on a fruit ranch in Washington and brought his love of fruit trees to the farmhouse in Northern Wisconsin. She taught me to pit cherries with a paperclip. We would pick wild strawberries by the side of the road when we took the dogs for a walk. She called me the Cool Whip Kid because I loved it so much on strawberries.
The green plastic juice glass with the drawings of citrus on them remind me of breakfast in the farmhouse kitchen: butter in the rooster-shaped butter dish, milk in the cow-shaped creamer, grandma’s fifty vitamins lined up next to her glass of OJ and red-breasted grosbeaks mobbing the birdfeeder outside the window.
So I will try to remember these good memories when I think of my grandma from now on. I know many of you have heard stories about the not-so-nice aspects of her personality. (Perhaps SMP should get the bureau with the drawers where she was forced to sleep as a baby) But as Heidi and I drive together every day, I will endeavor to remember the generousness and forget the rest.
