My grandmother knew how to bear hardship, how to bend with the unfairness of fate and yet never break. She knew how to suffer loss and not become bitter. She knew how to sacrifice her comfort for the well-being of another and not resent it. She knew how to love generously and unflinchingly not once, but a hundred times over. Hers was a heart that expanded to fit all of us, immediately and without reservation.
My grandmother was a ballerina. A pianist. A war-time truck driver. A social butterfly who could make even the most awkward among us feel interesting, listened to, included. Perhaps that’s why my grandfather, a very smart but not very talkative man, fell head over heels for that charming girl and danced all night with her on their first date. She laughed when she told me, decades later, that the truth is, he actually didn’t like to dance at all. But he wouldn’t let anyone else cut in. My grandmother was the kind of girl you wanted to dance with, whether you liked dancing or not.
My grandmother was a stickler for polite self-expression. She taught us all to refrain from that gross, uncouth phrase: I don’t like it. No, no. We who were lucky enough to be trained by her know to say, when it must be said at all, that we do not care for it. She was opinionated, she knew her own mind and was unafraid to express dissent. She just did it politely, with the grace of a woman who had lived her life equally well among flower shops and lead mines, wide open forests and printing presses.
My grandmother lived a very long life. More than nine decades of it, in fact. She came into the world at a time when wireless radios were still a novelty, before the stock market fell, when there had only been one world war. Nearly 94 years later she leaves in her wake a world made better by her capacity to love, her ability to find light even in tragedy, and her willingness to embrace us just the way we are. And even though she had lived such a long life. And even though she was ready, at the end, to reunite with the boy she danced all night with all those years ago. We ache at the loss of a woman who loved us even more, if such is possible, than we loved her. And we do not care for it, Grandma. We do not care for it at all.
My grandmother was a ballerina. A pianist. A war-time truck driver. A social butterfly who could make even the most awkward among us feel interesting, listened to, included. Perhaps that’s why my grandfather, a very smart but not very talkative man, fell head over heels for that charming girl and danced all night with her on their first date. She laughed when she told me, decades later, that the truth is, he actually didn’t like to dance at all. But he wouldn’t let anyone else cut in. My grandmother was the kind of girl you wanted to dance with, whether you liked dancing or not.
My grandmother was a stickler for polite self-expression. She taught us all to refrain from that gross, uncouth phrase: I don’t like it. No, no. We who were lucky enough to be trained by her know to say, when it must be said at all, that we do not care for it. She was opinionated, she knew her own mind and was unafraid to express dissent. She just did it politely, with the grace of a woman who had lived her life equally well among flower shops and lead mines, wide open forests and printing presses.
My grandmother lived a very long life. More than nine decades of it, in fact. She came into the world at a time when wireless radios were still a novelty, before the stock market fell, when there had only been one world war. Nearly 94 years later she leaves in her wake a world made better by her capacity to love, her ability to find light even in tragedy, and her willingness to embrace us just the way we are. And even though she had lived such a long life. And even though she was ready, at the end, to reunite with the boy she danced all night with all those years ago. We ache at the loss of a woman who loved us even more, if such is possible, than we loved her. And we do not care for it, Grandma. We do not care for it at all.
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