Coming Home

I remember it was fall, October I believe, in 1998. I had been driving nine hours in a 14 foot Ryder truck which contained all of my belongings. My dog Idgie (part Spitz, part Cocker Spaniel, totally cute) and I had traveled across the Cumberland Mountains, the flat land of Ohio, and the northeastern corner of Indiana. I pulled into the familiar winding driveway that took me around to the back of my Grandma and Grandpa's house. I had come home.

Grandma and Dad were waiting for me. Grandma had her hair covered with a scarf and wore her mother's red plaid wool jacket. She had on her work "sneakers" and was ready to unload. We spent the next several hours emptying out the truck into her garage. I was exhausted. But I was home.

Grandpa had passed away in 1997 and Grandma was understandably still quite heartbroken. Life must have felt very empty in the absence of her other half, someone she was married to for nearly fifty years.

I had been in Pennsylvania since 1992 and most of those years were spent battling depression. By 1998 I was out of a job, broke, and heartbroken. I needed Grandma. She needed me. So I went home.

For the next two years Grandma nursed my wounded Soul back to health. I tackled her "honey do" lists, tried to get her to eat morels, and helped her learn the computer. We watched TV together, ate ice cream together, laughed together. Sometimes we cried together.

Grandpa's chair was no longer empty. I also took over some of Grandpa's jobs. Like cutting fresh pussy willows for Grandma in the spring. I decorated the Christmas tree. I mowed the lawn. I critiqued commercials with her. We had a good life.

I got better, and Grandma began to smile again. When it was time to move on with my life and return to Michigan, I promised Grandma I would always be there for her, like she had been for me. I hugged her long and hard, and smelled her soft gray hair. A part of me didn't want to go. I wanted to stay in Grandma's love forever.

Those two years were some of the most precious of my life. Grandma became my friend, my confidant. She learned my darkest secrets and my greatest triumphs. I learned the story of her life, her childhood, her tragedies, her fears. I saw a strength in her I never knew existed. I learned her greatest regret was not joining the Armed Services. She would have been good at that. I saw a woman with a heart so big it could have encompassed the Universe. But she wouldn't let that part of her show so much.

Grandma was a proud woman. She had a right to be.

She was my hero.

The Perfect Food

Grandma Barton used to eat a sundae for dinner most nights of the week. "I believe I'll have a dish of ice cream," she would say to me from the comfort of her sky blue Lazy Boy recliner. "I'll get it. Do you want nuts?" I would ask from Grandpa's sky blue Lazy Boy recliner.  "Oh yes," she would reply. "Bananas?". "Sounds good," she would say. Off I would go to the kitchen to pull out the pail of ice cream from the freezer. Vanilla with chocolate swirls. Grandma had a stack of ice cream pails in the cupboard. They were good for many things.

I would scoop out several round balls of this delicious treat and place them in our bowls. I would then add Hershey's chocolate syrup (or whatever was on sale at the time), slice up some Dole bananas, and sprinkle with dry roasted peanuts. Jab in the spoons and we were good to go.

Back at the Lazy Boy ranch, we would settle in to eat our sundaes and watch Jag or Xena.  "Grandma, you know you really should eat a healthier supper," I would lecture. "I am 85 years old. Hasn't hurt me yet," she said proudly. "I guess your right," I said, eating another bite dripping with chocolate syrup.

My Beloved and I have started a similar ritual. We both used to get those ice cream cones from the ice cream truck when we were kids, you know the ones. Ice cream in a waffle cone, with chocolate and peanuts on top, all wrapped in paper?  Our local grocery store carries them, so when we need a little dessert, we stop in for a mini sundae.

These cones are the perfect food. A little dairy (ice cream), some protein (nuts), carbs (waffle cone), and dessert (chocolate). The green? My dollar I give the cashier. Grandma was right. Sundaes are good for you and healthy, too.

Grandma is gone now, but every once in awhile I still fix myself a hot fudge sundae with Dole bananas and dry roasted peanuts, put on an old episode of Jag, and sit back in Grandma's old sky blue Lazy Boy. Just for old times sake of course.

When Do People Choose to Die?

Death is one of life's greatest mysteries, something that happens to all living things, except Vampires of course. The body ceases to function and just quits running. It turns cold. And the person or dog or cat we knew is gone forever. It stuns us. It confuses us. Where did they go? That is the mystery.

Some folks believe that we choose the time of our birth and the time of our death. I have heard many people say how so-and-so waited until the family was together before passing. I think there might be some truth to this.

My Grandma did not EVER want to talk about death. She believed herself to be immortal. "I am not going to die," she would often say. But really she was afraid. She liked to have control of things in her life, and the mystery of Death is controlled by no one.

After Grandpa passed in 1997, Grandma stayed in her house on the hill in the woods. She had a set routine.  She would start the coffeepot in the morning, walk out to the mailbox to fetch the newspapers, and sat down in her blue Lazy Boy recliner with her Irish Creamer laced coffee, two oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and the papers. On went the TV and she would watch the last half of the morning news, then her favorite shows JAG and Walker Texas Ranger. She would then do her chores, work on the books for the Moose Lodge, check her email, do some cooking, maybe run an errand or two. Evenings were watching Xena, Star Trek, or whatever else she could find. If she were to awaken at say 1 am, which was not unusual, Grandma would turn on the TV and watch Disney's Zorro, the old black and white version.

Grandma was 87 years old in 2005. She still participated in the International Women's Bowling League and cooked every weekend for banquets and dinners at the Moose Lodge, where she also held office. Then she got breast cancer.

Grandma had already planned to go on a cruise to Alaska in June of that year, so she told her doctor no surgery until she got back. Fortunately, it was in the early stages and the surgery was very successful. She was going to be alright.  But then she had a heart attack which turned into congestive heart failure, and in October Grandma met the great mystery of Death.

A couple nights ago, I was watching a re-run of JAG (it always makes me feel close to Grandma somehow). It was the show's last episode. The date was April 29, 2005. I remember vividly watching that episode with her, and how sad she was that her favorite program was ending. She did not know she had cancer yet.

Then, Zorro was put back in the Disney vault, something the giant corporation does to make you think you will never ever ever see that show or movie again. Then, oh, maybe a few months later, they will release the show on DVD and make a million dollars off your relief.  Anyway, Zorro was a show Grandma loved, and it was now gone.

So I got to thinking, as I was watching the end of JAG's last episode, whether the losses of these familiar faces, Mac and Harm and Zorro, might have tipped Grandma toward considering moving on, subconsciously of course. I mean, she lost Grandpa, she was alone most of the time, and these people on the TV were her friends. I understand this. I am alone almost all the time. The people on my favorite TV shows are always there. I spend more time with my TV friends than my real life friends. They are too busy. But my TV friends, they are loyal. You get attached to them. I remember when I saw the Star Trek movie where Spock dies, I cried and cried and was devastated for days. Spock couldn't be dead, he was part of my life since I was a child! [Barbie, this is your Grandma. You need to see your doctor, honey. Love, Grandma]

So maybe the loss of those TV friends made a hole in Grandma's life, maybe times changed to the point that life became unfamiliar and wasn't going to get any better that way. She could no longer drive, she could no longer breathe, she could no longer walk without a walker, she could not watch JAG or Zorro anymore, all in a period of three months. So maybe she chose to exit this life for the great mystery of beyond.

Wherever you are Grandma, I hope you can watch any damn show you want to. I hope you can go bowling and dance and drive and cook and eat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And I hope you remember you and I watching that last episode of JAG together, tears streaming down our cheeks. We both knew it was the end.

Honey, Occur!, and Heaven

Honey bees swarm. They leave their hive with a queen and half the worker bees and land in a temporary spot until the designated bee scouts find a permanent home. The lifespan of a worker bee in the early summer is somewhere between four to six weeks. The queen, she can live four years or more. So it is very important that the bees find a new home soon after they swarm. The workers must build new honeycomb, the queen must lay her eggs, and the new generation of bees must hatch before the workers go to bee heaven. That is not much time.

On May 23rd, one of my bee hives swarmed with two queens. We captured one of the clusters, but the second, smaller one was out of reach 35 feet up in a tree. I figured they would fly off in a day or two, but they never did. For the past several weeks I have spent a considerable amount of time coaxing, praying, encouraging, yelling, setting baited hive boxes, all to no avail. The bees weren't moving. As I mark the days on the calendar, I know that time is running out for this little colony. Today is June 20th. I love those bees and I am worried.

My Grandma Barton never left the house without getting dressed up. Whether going to the grocery store, the doctor's office, or the gas station, she would put on a nice shirt, often her bright red jacket, and her white or navy blue polyester slacks. On special occasions, she would put a dab of Avon's Occur! perfume behind an ear, a drop on a wrist. Occur! was Grandma's scent. It entered a room and announced her presence seconds before she would slowly and confidently walk in. Grandma was Occur!, Occur! was Grandma.

At her funeral, I stood next to Grandma's casket checking one last time that she looked beautiful, well as beautiful as one can look in death. I had brought her bottle of Occur!, and put a dab behind her ear and one on her wrist. My Dad gently reminded me Grandma was dead and the perfume wouldn't work because she had no body heat. He was right. She didn't smell like Grandma at all. Not to be deterred, I put a few drops on the light bulb in the lamp next to her casket and Grandma's scent drifted up and over the crowd of mourners. Grandma had arrived.

Every once in awhile, I may be sitting in my car or watching TV and the scent of Occur! will enter the room. Grandma, coming to visit. I tell her what is going on in my life, how much I miss her. I ask her about Grandpa and all my other relatives in Heaven. And just as mysteriously as it appeared, the scent vanishes.

Today my friend Cathy and I were out in her front yard, marveling at several big beautiful hickory trees. All of a sudden, the smell of honey swirled in the air, enveloping me so completely for a moment I thought I had been transported into a hive. "Cathy, do you smell honey?" I asked her. She took a deep sniff. "Oh my gosh, I do! Where is it coming from?" she said. We looked around, thinking maybe there was a bee hive up in a nearby tree, but found nothing. And just as mysteriously as it appeared, the scent vanished. A thought crossed my mind.

When I got home from my visit with Cathy, one of the first things I did was to go look for the bees up in the tree. They were gone.

Grandma and Patsy

Grandma Barton had a morning routine. She would get up and start the Mr. Coffee Maker (she set it all up the night before), then trundle down the long asphalt driveway to her mailbox to retrieve the newspaper. Next, Grandma would head into the kitchen, pour herself a cup of coffee and stir in one teaspoon each of powdered Irish Cream flavored creamer, powdered regular creamer, and white sugar. A short couple of steps to the cookie pail to pick up two chocolate chip/oatmeal/raisin cookies and then it was over to the recliner for breakfast and the newspaper.

Every Sunday, before she sat down to eat her cookies and drink her coffee, Grandma Barton would load up her phonograph with records. She would select four or five albums of whoever she felt like listening to that particular day, set them on the spindle, move the arm over on top of them, and turn the record player on. She must have had several hundred albums by such greats as the Mills Brothers, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Willie Nelson. But her favorite was Patsy Cline.

Grandma loved to dance. Whenever a Patsy Cline song came on the radio and there was a willing dance partner in the house, Grandma would soon be swaying across the kitchen floor, singing along.

She used to ask me, "Why don't you learn to play some Patsy Cline?". I told her it just wasn't my style. This is one of my greatest regrets in life.

I never asked Grandma about it, but it seemed like all her favorite songs were about heartache, and nobody could sing lively heartache songs better than Patsy. I knew Grandma had her heart broken pretty bad when she was a young woman, maybe that was why those songs spoke to her. I have to chuckle as she used to complain that I never played any "happy" songs. Maybe she was hoping that I wouldn't have to go through life with a secret pain inside like she did.

My Grandma died at home, and all of us were there with her. The local funeral home director, who had taken care of many of our family members over the years, came to take her body. They put Grandma on the gurney and as they started to move toward the door, I shouted "Wait!" I went to the CD player and put on Patsy Cline. Our family made a line from the dining room into the kitchen and we watched Grandma leave her home one last time, with Patsy singing "I'll Be Loving You Always". It couldn't have been more fitting.

At Grandma's funeral, I finally sang her a Patsy Cline song. My sisters and I created a medley of a few of her favorite tunes, which included Crazy, Release Me, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, then back into Crazy. Sounds weird, but it works, try it. We led friends and family in celebrating her love of music. Had my sisters not stood up there with me, I don't think I could have gotten through those songs. I still choke up every time I sing Crazy.

I have had many conversations with Grandma since then, letting her know how sorry I am I didn't learn those songs when she was still alive. Sometimes when I go visit her grave, I put on a Patsy Cline CD and let it blast out over the cemetery. I swear I can see Grandma dancing and swaying across the grass, gently singing along.