Grandma Myrnie is Movin' On

I don't know what to say. No, Grandma Myrnie isn't her real name...but Wonder Woman (my sister) is named after my grandma, so we might as well call her Grandma Wonder Woman...but Wonder Woman goes by Myrnie, too.

I got an e-mail first thing Saturday morning that said, very simply, that Grandma Myrnie was gone. Grandma has been struggling with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig Disease for short) for several years. The picture above is just after BBJ was born, which was very close to the time that Grandma started spending all her time in either a chair or a bed. (ALS, very simply put, attacks the motor neurons in the central nervous system so that muscles don't respond to signals to move. The muscles, both voluntary and involuntary, begin to atrophy and harden, eventually encompassing the entire body, including the lungs.)

When I found out, I first ran upstairs to find Lo Gung, who was still in bed. We had a very tender moment as I lay, sobbing, on the bed with Lo Gung just rubbing my back. Suddenly, I felt a very small mouth kiss my cheek, and a very small hand start to rub my back. It was tender, but short lived. As soon as she was sure I wasn't going to melt away to nothing, she began her Saturday morning ritual of jumping on the bed and landing on Lo Gung's shins. (I think she's trying to snap them in half, but she's only about 30 pounds, so she hasn't done any lasting damage so far.) We spent a quiet day at home, first cleaning the entire house, and then heading out to Target and then to Friendly's for dinner. I could think of no better way to honor my thrifty, spunky, foodie Grandma than a cheap dinner of greasy diner food, in a small restaurant full of kids and families, and topping it all off with ice cream sundaes.

Grandma was always a "do-er." She grew up as the daughter of sharecroppers in rural Alabama. I thinks he gets her spunk from her mother, who also died around this time of year nearly 20 years ago. Grandma was popular with her schoolmates, and a big help at home. There was a time when her father would keep her home so much to help pull in the crops, there was simply no way she could pass her current level in school - she'd have to retake it. When she did make it to school, she got top marks. Her classmates started a petition, and the teacher agreed, to go ahead and pass her anyhow, despite the fact that she was not able to show up for the Final Exams that year.

When she had aquired all the schooling her county could provide, a favorite teacher offered to take her out to the East Coast to work as a secretary for the government. That was where she met my Grandfather, a handsome recruit from Idaho. He serviced the airplanes that kept the men in the air during the Korean War. They were married, and started their family. My mother is the middle child, with one older sister and one younger brother.

I've lived close to Grandma Myrnie for most of my life. Holidays were always at her house, no questions. There is a fight, every Christmas. We always go to Grandma's house on Christmas Eve. There, we are allowed to open One Present, of our choice. Grandma loves to watch us open presents, especially when we were younger. Grandpa always objected, and never opened a present that day. It became a game with us, to see who would get Grandpa to crack and open just one little package before Christmas Day. I don't think any of us ever succeeded.

I can blame Grandma's Christmas traditions entirely for my unhealthy love of fruit cake and cheese. (Yes, together - the protein makes it healthy, don't you see?) We always had to be careful because there was always one fruitcake set aside for my family - the one that wasn't doused in rum. (My mother realized, at some point, that the fruitcake and cheese she loved to eat in her lunches when she attended school was, in fact, doused in rum...and might have contributed to her dozy afternoons in high school!)

Grandma also used to make the most fantastic bran muffins. I love bran muffins, but really can't eat anyone's but hers anymore. Alas, I think that is the one recipe of hers I never got copied down. I may just have to live a bran muffin-less existence from now on. Hers were always moist, never dry. Paired with a slice of cheese (do you see a pattern forming here?) they made a most excellent snack when I was pregnant with BBJ.

At Christmas time, there was always a crockpot of apple cider steaming away on the counter. There were always small oranges, bobbing merrily, and entire sticks of cinnamon and cloves rolling around on the bottom. You wanted to make sure that you got a cup of cider on the first day that she made it. Anything not consumed that day would be cooled and siphoned back into the cider jug to be reheated another day. The cinnamon and cloves would steep, and steep, and steep...until it it was just a big mug of cloves with apple flavors swirling in the background.

Just before I left on my mission, Grandma had me over for a Last Supper - I could choose anything I wanted from her repertoire. She was kind of surprised when I chose her chicken enchiladas. (I've seen the recipe now, and I can see why she was surprised. There must be at least two million calories in each enchilada, and I never ate fewer than three.) It was a heavenly meal - a plate full of her creamy chicken enchiladas, and a big salad (from a bag, thankyouverymuch) topped with itty bitty broccoli and cauliflower florets and loads of tiny rock shrimp, still cold from their recent thawing.

When we were young, Grandma used to keep Wonder Woman and I overnight, as a treat. (To us, herself, or my mother...I can't be sure which!) (She tried to split Wonder Woman and I up once, so that we could get some one on one attention. Yeah - that didn't go well. We both ended up crying in the foyer at the prospect of spending our first night apart. Yes, we were 8. Your point?) Whenever we spent the night, there was always sugary cereal for breakfast (nearly always stale as we were the only ones to eat it, and it was always the box we'd opened during our previous visits, at least a month or two before.) If it wasn't Cap'n Crunch, it was AM PM Donuts down the street. I always got a chocolate covered cream filled, and Wonder Woman always got an apple fritter.

I can recall Grandma cussing only once, and I always completely took Grandma's side in the matter. She was driving, with my sister and I in the back seat of her baby blue Oldsmobile. (Did anyone else ever think that name was either really unfortunate, or really ironic? No? Alright. It's just me, then.) Another driver swerved in front of her and she very nearly hit him. Seeing as how she had her grandkids in the back seat (read: Precious Cargo), she let loose with a string of profanities, telling that driver just what he ought to do, and how, and when. I couldn't tell you exactly what she said, but I remember feeling that she was completely justified and knowing, somehow, that she never would have been as upset if she didn't have her two eldest grandkids in the backseat.

Shortly after I married Lo Gung, I was fired (yes, fired) from my secretarial position with a local insurance agent (and the mother of a long-time high school friend). (Turns out I'm pretty bad at both following directions, and completely assimilating to someone else's vision of how a form letter ought to look. Whodathunk?! ;-)) My new-found free time left me with lots of time to both start a family and start to visit my grandmother once a week. Every Thursday, Wonder Woman and I would bundle into one of our Civics and take the 45 minute drive up to Grandma's house. As Grandma got sicker, we kept piling on the kids. First Ernie, then BBJ, and finally MiMi a few weeks ago. (Did I not tell y'all Wonder Woman had her baby? She's a little chunker of a siren. If you didn't know she was there, you'd think you were being attacked by a mountain cat. A really loud mountain cat.) We enjoyed our visits with her, and she enjoyed watching hour after hour of Sesame Street with Ernie. (BBJ never was much for cartoons and television, unless it was starring her. Otherwise, it's just a waste of time!)

Grandma's death came as a shock, but it wasn't wholly unexpected. I know that she's free of the pain of the last few years. Looking back, I think it's fairly obvious that I aquired my healthy love for food from my Grandma. There wasn't anything she didn't want to try, and she always did it as cheaply as possible. Her favorite meal was to head down to the local Chinese buffet and eat all the Fried Wonton crisps and Sweet and Sour Chicken she could hold. After she could no longer chew, but before she progressed to a feeding tube, I used to make her lemon chicken and rice, cut up into chunks so small she didn't even need to chew them. She was so disappointed when we had to put in a feeding tube - she couldn't taste anything anymore. They told me, after she died, that on Friday she wanted nothing more than to hold Grandpa's hand. Oh, and she desperately wanted a mug filled with ice, and a spoon. Never mind that she couldn't chew, or even swallow, anymore. She wanted something in her mouth. All day Saturday, I couldn't help but picture her, in Heaven, chatting with her mother and eating her fill of cheap Chinese food, black eyed peas, collard greens and stale cornbread in a bowl of buttermilk. She was a Southern Gal, after all. Besides, I don't think cholesterol and calories count in Heaven.

(I will probably be taking a bloggy break this week as I travel back to the Pacific Northwest, sans hubs and toddler, to attend the funeral. I will be singing with my sisters, and meeting my newest niece for the first time. Aren't funerals a mixed blessing? This will be LoGung's first time to stay, alone, with BBJ overnight. Please send him a kind thought this week!)