I love you, Mall

My great grandpa's name was Pop Pop. I adored him. Mainly because he gave me $25 in ones, stuffed in a box full of top ramen on my birthday. I am easily bought. Not much has changed. Throw me a twenty and some sodium and I'll be your best friend. He was an old Vaudeville dancer and would make me time-step with him on my grandmother's kitchen floor. Even as a child I knew that anyone over the age of 80 deserved to get whatever they asked for simply for putting up with life that long, so time-step I did, as mortifying as it was. I was fairly sure Kelly Kapowski's grandpa never made those types of demands but it became one of my favorite memories of him.

I don't know what my kids will remember about Ma. Hopefully they'll remember how much she loved them and how they'd go into her room to visit with her at Grandma's house. Maybe Taylor will remember how she wanted Ma to teach her to cross stitch, and Corinne will remember how Ma let her steal repeatedly from the candy dish. I hope they both remember what a great lady she was. But if they don't and those memories get fuzzy, I'll remind them.

I know I'll always remember how difficult it was to tell them of her passing. I was holding it together pretty well until I picked them up and their heart felt reactions made the drive to Simi that much harder. Corinne didn't want to talk about it. She cried and repeatedly said she didn't want to talk about it anymore. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a sharpie and a napkin and wrote "I love you Mall" on it. Apparently her hearing is something that needs to be checked, but the gesture was so sweet it literally brought me to tears. Taylor picked up her journal too and started writing stories. I understand their need to write things down when things get tough. Taylor teetered between being really sad, to comforting Corinne, then firing off questions about life and death. I was thankful to finally arrive at Grandma's where cousins distracted the girls.

I'm glad one of my last memories of Ma was a recent trip to The Bear Pit, where at lunch Wes bluntly asked her how she felt about being at the end of the road. Her response was that she was ready to go. Getting old was for the birds. She wanted to see Kelly again. Not being able to travel and really live life was frustrating for someone like her. I remember thinking how brave she was to approach death the way she approached life, since the great unknown is sort of terrifying to most people.

I'm thankful she was my pseudo grandmother the last 13 years or so. I'm grateful for our chats, our shared love of books and The Davincci Code, her humor, and just her presence that I'll miss so much.