Tag: grandma elsie

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Always Elizabeth

Every so often, we like to joke about famous figures who seem eternal. It used to be George Burns. Then Betty White. And of course, there’s Keith Richards, who looks about 3,000 years old despite an actual age that’s closer to 750.

And then there’s the Queen. Or there was.

After her recent passing, a friend pointed out that most of us had never known a world that didn’t have Queen Elizabeth II in it. Granted, that could be said about almost anyone from the ever-smaller World War II generation. But with a presence as well-known as hers, it was a little like learning that the Big Ben clock tower had suddenly vanished. Distant and faraway, with no real impact on my day-to-day life, and yet somehow … one more constant that was gone.

I wonder what Grandma Elsie and Granddad Bill would have said.

My grandparents, like my wife’s grandmother, were English. Elsie and Bill came to this country in 1957, when QE2 was still very new indeed. Granddad had even seen her close up as a young girl in the 1930s during his brief tenure in the Grenadier Guards – yes, the guys with those wonderful hats. The Guards liked little Elizabeth,  Grandma once told me, but her little sister Margaret was much more mischievous, dashing past soldiers she had already walked by to make them jump back to attention. Kids will be kids, even when they’re royalty.

It’s probably Grandma’s occasional royal-watching that sparked my own here-and-there awareness of the Windsors. And through all the family drama – and my, was there a lot of it – the familiar face aged and endured. Always with that familiar stern dignity and a Corgi close to hand.

In that regard, losing her was a little like losing Grandma all over again.  

The stoicism was easy to tease, of course. “The Naked Gun” portrayed Queen Elizabeth at a ballgame, passing refreshments and doing The Wave with aplomb. The Olympics depicted her skydiving with James Bond, while her own jubilee put her at tea with a well-meaning Paddington Bear. But the joke always had a bit of respect in it, maybe even some envy at the ability to stay unruffled in the most unexpected situations.

None of us have the wealth or the staff or the seemingly endless hat collection of an English queen, of course. But the patience … that’s something more achievable. And something we seem to need more of every day.

Elizabeth took her throne in a nation still recovering from the strains of war. Our own time seems to be forever in the midst of it. I won’t run the roll call of disasters; it’s too familiar and too depressing.  But as each new crisis arrives – whether personal or international – the pressure on each of us pulls just a little tighter.

But we continue. We have to. Perhaps looking back at what we’ve survived, perhaps looking forward to what may come. But always looking to each other as we meet the moment now, with whatever hope we can find to push back the night.

That, too, has remained changeless over 70 years.

“Today we need a special kind of courage,” the queen said early in her reign. “Not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”

That spirit, more than any crown or monument, is a legacy to be treasured. And shared.

Farewell, Your Majesty. And thank you.

And don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on Keith.

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Unfinished Tales

It’s barely even March and I am already looking ahead to summer.

This is not normal for me. I’m the person who, when given a choice between the blazing hot and the freezing cold, will take the weather that requires a coat, a scarf, and a chorus of “Walking In a Winter Wonderland.” After all, you can bundle up, but there’s only so far you can peel down. And when you’re looking at the chores ahead, snow melts, but grass grows. Right?

I’m not saying I’m a complete polar bear. Spring is when life wakes up, especially life that wears baseball gloves and purple uniforms and has one chance in a hundred of seeing the World Series this year. Fall is the time of great-smelling grills and gorgeous trees that no rake can ever keep up with.

But summer? Really?

As usual, you can blame my addiction to theater. On March 16, the Longmont Theatre Company opens a two-weekend run of “Leaving Iowa,” a show about the iconic Summer Vacation Family Road Trip. And this time around, I’m playing Dad, which means I get to invoke the Ritual Repeated Parental Warning: “Now settle down back there, or I’m pulling this car over!”

But it’s more than that, really. It’s also a story about family ties over the years. About how your perspective changes when you move from child to adult (and not just by moving into the driver’s seat). And especially about how you always think there’s more time to know someone until there suddenly isn’t.

That last one hits home. No matter what the time of year. But for me, maybe especially now.

***

A few weeks ago, many of you saw my column about the recent passing of our 21-year-old cousin Melanie. I know, because so many of you chose to respond and send your sympathies, whether through the mail, online, or in the newspaper itself. It was gratifying, healing, and even a little overwhelming to see how many people cared.

I appreciate it and I thank all of you. It brought a lot of love and warmth to a season that had suddenly become too cold even for me.

As much as I love winter, it’s become a little haunted for us. Mel left us in January. Last year, so did our long-time canine queen, Duchess the Wonder Dog. Four years ago in February, we said goodbye to Grandma Elsie. A few years before that, it was Melanie’s dad Andy – January again. Story upon story, soul upon soul.

Sometimes we had a lot of warning before the final chapter. Sometimes none at all. Always, afterward, there are the feelings of questions not asked, things not done, stories not told. It happens even when you’re close, and if there’s been any distance at all, it only magnifies the lost opportunities.

I once wrote about a folk song called “Kilkelly, Ireland,” where an Irish father and an immigrant son exchange letters across the Atlantic for 30 years. The father is always asking the son to come home to visit, the son never seems to – and by the time he finally is ready to, Dad has already passed on.

There will always be a Kilkelly moment. There will always be one last thing you meant to do or say, because as people, we never go into moments thinking they’ll be the last one. There will always be something more you wanted them to experience, whether it’s to see a great-grandchild arrive or to enter college and begin life.

Living stories don’t end neatly.

At the same time, as a kind person reminded me, they also don’t truly end.

We are all more than just ourselves. We carry pieces of every person we’ve ever loved, every story that ever intersected with our own. They shaped us, influenced us, colored the way we see the world.

And when they leave, that touch remains. We carry a little of their flame.

Their story goes on.

And so, when I mount the stage in a couple of weeks, I won’t do so alone. In fact, I’ll be carrying quite a crowd.

I just hope there’s room for all of us in the station wagon.

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Christmas Presence

“He had eaten most, talked most and laughed most. But now he simply was not there at all!”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”

 

Every year, my sisters and I knew that to wake up Christmas, we had to wake up Grandma Elsie.

We planned it with the skill of a military operation. I would stay awake through the night on Christmas Eve, softly singing carols to myself in order to stay awake. At 6 a.m. – the earliest time we were allowed up, amidst warnings that would chill the blood of Jacob Marley – I would wake Leslie. She would wake Carey. And together, we would let our rambunctious dog into the basement where Grandma slept, so that she could make coffee and trade silly songs with us while waiting for the caffeinated odor to rouse Mom and Dad.

It was her English-accented voice that taught us the words to “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” It was her presents that always included a package of miniature chocolate Santas. She was often the one who invited us to Christmas Eve services and always the one who would have a margarita with Christmas Eve dinner at the Armadillo, our standby restaurant on Dec. 24th for over 30 years.

And this year, it’s her absence that’s felt most around the Christmas tree.

It’s our first Christmas without Grandma. It still feels strange to say or write it. It felt strange back on Thanksgiving, when my Dad’s voice quavered slightly as he remembered her while saying grace. It was an occasion with good food, good family and lots of squirming toddlers – just the sort of environment she loved most.

The place she would once have been at the heart of.

They say the holidays can be the hardest time. I had no idea how true that was until now. We’d had an empty place at the table before – once, when my new job in Kansas had me working on the night of the holiday, and a few times since after Leslie moved to Washington and couldn’t join us as frequently.

But those were small things by comparison, shadows that could be put to flight if needed. All of us knew that, if it were necessary to have the whole crew at the old house, we would find a way there.

Not so easy this time.

It may be most powerful now because of the ritual. Christmas is the time when traditions wake and walk again, when we do things the way we’ve done them for years upon years. Favorite movies, favorite meals, favorite memories. The weight of that habit can become mighty, as Heather and I discovered our first Christmas, when we debated whether stockings were emptied before presents or afterward. (I still think I was right.)

But when the time comes to walk that ages-old dance again, there’s suddenly a step missing. A skip in the music.

And it makes the absence, the presence, more noticeable than ever.

Perhaps that’s as it should be. I’ve always had a disdain for “getting over it” or “moving on.” Memories should remain, just as love remains. How horrible to even contemplate forgetting, how hideous the thought of putting that memory away, like an unneeded ornament in a taped-up cardboard box.

But memory doesn’t have to be joyless, either.

Grandma loved this time of year. She may have had mixed feelings about the snow – or even spectacularly unmixed feelings – but she never failed to take joy in the lights, the music and especially the gathered family. She would not have wanted that joy to end, nor should it.

Not even when it needs to live side-by-side with grief for a while.

It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to remember.

But it’s also OK to celebrate.

And so, as we scramble to gather presents, I’ll also stop to mind a Christmas presence. Maybe even sing an off-kilter carol or two.

I’ll wake up her memory yet again.

And with it, wake up Christmas one more time.

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Soccer? I Barely Know ‘Er!

Well, we made it.

In the world’s sport, a game few of us follow and even fewer understand, the United States has survived. More than survived. We’ve advanced with honor in the World Cup, making the “knockout round” with a run that went toe-to-toe with some of the best. Now it only takes one more win – yeah, right, “only” – to get us playing on the Fourth of July as one of eight surviving teams, the best of the best.

So, in honor of the achievement, and in hope of things to come, here’s a “lucky seven” of World Cup observations.

1) Is it just me or do professional sports teams now need a kindergarten teacher on the coaching staff? “Remember, play fair, no hitting and absolutely NO biting!” I’m honestly not sure which boggles me more – that there’s a World Cup-level soccer player with three biting incidents in his record, or that any team would keep him on after no. 2.

Hey, Suarez. If you want a quick nibble, why don’t you get it in the boxing ring like a normal person?

2) It’s clear to me that the United States soccer team learned everything it knows from the NBA. In a long game with a lot of back-and-forth movement, always put the most exciting stuff in the last two minutes for the fans at home. The networks will thank you later.

3) Sorry, my English friends. You guys are the ones who actually invented the word “soccer,” as in the old nickname for “association football.” And if you’re still going to get pushy about where the word “football” belongs, may I remind you that our ball looks a lot more like a foot than yours does.

4) It’s kind of fun to watch Americans get excited about a game where no one’s really clear on the rules. (Myself included – I get into it heavily during World Cup time, then sink into blissful ignorance for another four years.) It’s like taking a date to their first ever Broncos game: “OK, what are they doing now? Who’s that guy moving? Why’s Peyton Manning putting his hand there?” (Pause.) “Did we win yet?”

5) Like any sport, the memories that come with it are half the fun. And when I watch soccer, many of the memories are of my English-born Grandma Elsie, who with the aid of my sister Leslie, valiantly tried to explain the game to us in 1994, when the Cup tournament came to the U.S. (We all, of course, surrendered at any attempt to understand the offsides rules … but then, so does everyone else, including two-thirds of the referees.)

In later years, Grandma’s childhood stories often included accounts of going to the weekly soccer games with her dear sweet mother Annie Phoebe, a demure soul who would sit down, take one look at the action and scream “PUT YOUR GLASSES ON, REF!” So the next time you see me holler at a TV set, know that I come by it honestly.

(I might add that Grandma Elsie’s own passion, from the time she came to Colorado to the day she died, was Broncos football. Yes, football. See note no. 3.)

6) Yes, I know. It’s silly to get excited about 20 highly-paid men chasing a ball over a lawn for 90 minutes or so, while two other men try to stop them. (Watching 22 highly-paid men in armor fighting over a squashed ball on a lawn is much more sensible, right?) But you know what? We need a little more silliness in the world. And while it’s not curing cancer or landing someone on Mars, I’d rather see people get excited about this than the latest celebrity trial. If you get a taste for it, it might even bring you some harmless joy.

Just don’t, um, get too much of a taste for it. (See note no. 1.)

7) I know we’re overmatched. I know we’re probably going home soon. I know we’ve got all the chances of a crayon in a clothes dryer and might leave less of a mark.

But doggone it, I still can’t wait for Tuesday’s game.

Let’s have a ball.

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The Face in the Mirror

When I was little, getting my hair washed could be a life-changing event.

Every parent and grandparent knows the drill. Get the child in the tub for a bath. Pour water over their head. Shampoo, then rinse with another drenching that leaves the hair plastered, dripping, soaked.

By the time Grandma Elsie was done with me, I would look into the bathroom mirror and see a werewolf cub that had been left out in the rain too long.

“That’s not me!” I’d shout out. And, smiling or laughing, Grandma would brush and dry my hair until, indeed, it did look like me again.

That memory passed my mind a lot last week as I sat at her hospital bedside with the rest of the family.

It had happened too fast, and then too slow. A moment of socks slipping on bathroom tile had broken Grandma Elsie’s pelvis and sent her to the hospital. Recovery seemed to be painful, but likely – until the internal injuries set to work.

From recovery room to intensive care. From intensive care to hospice. Time passed and turned to pain, pain submitted to medicine and became an hours-long sleep.

Then, the sleep too, passed. And with it passed Grandma.

A part of me hasn’t come back from that yet.

In many ways, Grandma Elsie was the third parent to me and my sisters. For a few years, she lived with us; for all our lives, she was never far away. We only had to hear her English accent or see her smile – a mix of kindness and mischief – to feel better, to know that things were OK.

On her last day, I couldn’t see that smile anymore. And that wasn’t right.

That wasn’t her.

But how do you brush and dry out pain?

I think that’s the great fear at the heart of a death: that you’ll lose someone in truth and not just in time. That, deprived of their presence, even memory will fade to a half-recalled voice and a blurry image, that the person will become less real until you find yourself wondering if you knew them at all.

It’s why I’ve always been offended at the idea that someone will “get over it” or “let go” or “move on.” A piece of you will never let go entirely. And that’s OK. It means a piece of them is still with you, that they touched your life and shaped your soul in a way that still echoes down the years.

Even when the pain of those last memories threatens to color everything else.

“That’s not me.”

No, it’s not. But like the sopping hair, the pain is only a veil. The real face can still be found.

My youngest sister, Carey, found it. Always the most visual of us, she gathered photographs that had been saved through the years and built a display.  Grandma getting married in her hat and coat during the war. Grandma laughing riotously at a wedding. Grandma posing with my two sisters in elaborate grade-school hairstyles for a “seniors prom.”

That was her.

My other sister, Leslie, found it. Always the best speaker, she reminded everyone at the service of the little moments that made Grandma who she was – including how she teased Leslie mercilessly for describing her as “spunky.”

That was her.

Me? I’m the one with the written words and the bulging notebooks. I’m the one who interviewed Grandma while she was alive (at Mom’s request), who built the obit from notes and memories and began working on a “book” for the great-grandkids. From the canary named Bill to the teacher who taped her mouth shut, from the wartime work in an airplane factory to the fractured Christmas carols of my childhood, she was there.

That was her.

When my other grandma passed in 1987, one of my sisters hugged Grandma Elsie tightly and asked “You’re not going to die, are you?”

“Honey,” Grandma assured her, “I’m not going to die for a long, long time.” (As she neared 93, she told me with a laugh “I didn’t realize it was going to be this long!”)

The time finally came. But we’re still holding her close. Trying to remember the last instruction she wrote for us. The one that said “Laugh, don’t cry.”

That’s how she lived. And that’s how she’ll live on.

That, indeed, was her.

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Precious Memory

I sometimes joke that I’m paid to be a 24-hour expert. Learn a topic, sum it up, then move on to the next one.

This time, I’m not getting paid. And I’m hoping to hold on to this subject for a lot longer than a day.

Right, Grandma Elsie?

My grandma, for those of you who don’t know, is officially amazing. She’s been through wartime Britain and the Blitz. She started her life over in America when she was just two years younger than I am now. She even survived living with us when my sisters and I were little, full of the energy and innocently impudent questions of childhood. (“Grandma, do you remember the Revolution?”)

But I’d never heard all the stories. And the ones I knew, I wanted a better grip on. Memory can be like an old screen door in the wind sometimes; if you don’t reinforce it quickly, it can be gone before you know it.

It was Mom who had the idea. How about an interview?

“It would be nice for Ivy, Gil, and any other future great-grandkids to know a little about her life,” Mom wrote me in an email, referring to my niece and nephew. “I have some vague ideas – but it would be good to have it straight from her.”

Yes.

I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years. I’ve chatted with a veteran of World War I, with an artist who works in cardboard, with teenage investigative reporters.

None of them were this much fun.

There’s nothing like rediscovering your own family. There’s always one more thing to learn, one more subject that brings a smile to both of you, or a sigh, or even a blink of recognition.

I knew that Grandma’s dad had served in Egypt in World War I. I didn’t know he’d been a voracious reader (like most of this family, to be honest) whose favorite novel was Adam Bede.

I had vaguely remembered that she’d worked in an airplane factory during World War II. I hadn’t known that she and one other lady had been the first two women on the fitting room floor. “The guys worked so hard to moderate their language,” she laughed.

I had known, in an academic way, about the evacuations at the start of the Blitz – but not that her family had been one of the ones to take off, with hastily packed bags and a canary named Bill.

Every piece led to another – childhood friends, old school subjects, jobs and fears long since gone. It was like discovering a patchwork quilt, one square at a time.

No, it was like meeting a friend all over again – a friend I’ve known as long as I’ve been alive.

And it made me wonder. How much do I really remember? How much would I be able to pass on someday?

Plenty of people remind you to capture the memories of others before they’re gone. We’ve all seen projects involving World War II veterans and Depression survivors and many others. It’s a good idea and a vital one.

But we sometimes forget that we’re a link in the chain, too – and a curiously ephemeral one, with so much of our past and present living a virtual existence. Pieces of us live here, there, everywhere in silicon and electricity, but how often do we think to consolidate it all for someone else?

How often do we even do that for ourselves?

Isn’t now a good time to start?

It’s worth thinking about. And as I pull together the “Grandma notes” – and add to them, count on it – I may just begin to jot down some Scott chronicles as well, a piece at a time.

After all, someday Ivy’s and Gil’s kids may want to become an expert on me.

And I hope they’ll want to know it for more than 24 hours.