Celebrating Grandma's Life...

My dear Grandma passed away last Tuesday. Friday, much of the family gathered together to pay our respects to Grandma and remember together the petite, fiesty woman we all loved so dearly. I do not have a recent picture of Grandma to post here. The picture I will always hold in my mind, though, is that last, huge smile I saw on her face not long before she passed from this world. It was the smile of an inside joke...the kind that passes between Grandmas and their grandchildren. I was helping Grandma with her meal...chocolate ice cream and banana (what else would any self-respecting Case have for supper?)...when I commented to Grandma that she needed to start eating more. She was probably down to less than 65 pounds. Stressing my point that she needed to put some meat on her bones, I exclaimed, "Grandma, your ears are TRANSLUCENT!" (Indeed they were like elfish tissue paper.) My own mother gasped in absolute shocked horror that I would have uttered such a thing ALOUD to Grandma...but, Grandma just broke into the hugest grin I had seen on her face in years. The thought of translucent ears struck her as funny as it did me! ...and my mother's disapproval at such a statement made our shared delight in the moment all the more intimate. Just as I so often find myself disapproving of the very things my children's grandparents find the most delightful in my own children. In the moment of that smile, I was a little girl again...adored by my grandmother and getting away with something my parents would have never permitted. That is the moment I will hold in my heart...Grandma at 92,unable to do so many things anymore, yet still able to fill me, at 47, with same innocent delight I felt when I was just four years old...basking in her attention...sharing a secret that was ours alone...

We sure will miss you, Grandma...