Last week I took a personal day from work to go with my step-mom to visit my gramma. My gramma is a remarkable lady who will be celebrating her 84th birthday this year. My dad told me yesterday that he would never have thought, if you asked him 20 years ago, that my gramma would live to see 84 years, saying that she had a lot of stress in her life. That isn’t the story I’m here to tell, though.
I visited my gramma because she is moving with her husband to a nursing home. For many years, she lived with my grampa in a beautiful little arts & crafts home on the edge of a farm. That’s where we’d go to visit them when we were kids. The house had all kinds of cool features, like a built-in china cabinet, complete with drawers for linens, right in the wall in the hallway adjacent to the dining room. It had a laundry shoot in the bathroom so you could look into that cupboard straight down to the pile of laundry being collected on the basement floor below. When we visited Gramma and Grampa we did things like pick strawberries from her large garden, or ride the lawn tractor with Grampa, or explore the glass-doored cabinet filled with books in the spare room.
Gramma loves birds and nature, and at one time, before arthritis made it impossible, painted beautiful floral oil paintings. She serves tea to her friends and family with lovely, dainty tea cups and saucers, and bakes a mean apple pie.
Eventually Gramma and Grampa needed to live somewhere that didn’t require so much maintenance, so with heavy hearts they moved into town, to an apartment building filled with older people like them. When my grampa died, it was Gramma who comforted me, clasping my hand tightly at the grave while I cried my head off.
I really do think the world of my gentle and loving Gramma, and now her health is getting more difficult to maintain inside that apartment she now shares with her new husband, John. Today they are moving to a new home, probably the last home they will know in this lifetime. When I visited last week, Gramma told me to look through her kitchen cupboards, to take anything there I think I might use. That was difficult and strange and lovely all at the same time. I took some things for practical reasons, but mostly I took things that I remembered her having in the old farm house when we were kids, things that would remind me of her as I use them in my kitchen. Things about which I could someday say to my own children, “Those belonged to your great grandmother.”
A beautiful green ceramic bowl. “That looks really pretty filled with apples,” she told me.
Her rolling pin.
Her collection of wooden spoons.
A set of dessert dishes, each with a different picture of fruits and nuts on the face. “Those are so lovely, especially this time of year,” she said.
A tea cup and saucer.
Two tiny silver candy and nut dishes that Grampa gave her when they were first married.
A fork and knife that remain from her wedding china, the pattern appropriately named “Adoration.”
It’s bittersweet, but I am so proud and pleased that she has entrusted me with these things.
“I’ll take good care of anything I take home with me, you know, Gramma,” I told her.
“Oh honey, I know how you are,” she replied.
That is very, very sweet, Amy.
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You will treasure that stuff forever — I love the odd this or that from my grandmother’s house — it was just something in the cabinet until *I* got it, and now it’s a treasure.
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How wonderful to have some of those things that make you think of her. i have few of those things – my family did not have much like that – but I treasure what I do have, and have made some connections of my own, like eating her favourite fruit. It’s so nice to have something to mak you think of someone sepcial. I’m glad you have that.
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I love this post. I have things from both my Grandmas and it’s so bittersweet.
That makes me want to smile and cry at the same time.
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What a great story…I have this beautiful set of cups and saucers that my grandmother brought with her from Italy. In her honor I pull out the cups and saucers when I make espresso or capucchino.
Shoot Amy, you made me cry – but in a totally wonderful way.
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You are being featured on Five Star Friday:
http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2008/10/five-star-friday-edition-26-which.html
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Oh honey, this is the nicest post…
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I found you on Five Star Friday, and just had to make a comment. My dear Gramma spent the last year of her life in an assisted living home with most of her belongings in storage. I didn’t think at the time that I would need or want anything that belonged to her, but when my aunt offered to let my sisters and I go through Gramma’s things, I was surprised to find so many things that reminded me of her. I now wear a beautiful cocktail ring that my Gramma wore on special occasions. It doesn’t matter how much it’s worth, to me it’s priceless.
I’m glad you have things that remind you of your Gramma, too.
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I love this post, Amy — I especially love how she told you ‘I know how you are’. Really, that’s family, right?
I did something similar with my grandparents, too: the pieces from them that I have are very meaningful, and these objects keep them in my life, even though they both died in 2001. Not to be morbid. YOu know what I mean.
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And speaking of things that make you bawl…!
What a great story and a beautiful memory you’ll always have.
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I wish I had a few more of my granny’s things, but I do treasure those that I have. Beautiful post.
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