My Grandma died.

I am not going to delve into it here other than to say she was the sweetest and most honest person I have ever known, and I will miss her terribly.
The memorial service was Saturday the 21st, and given how she often wished there were more hours in the day, I found it appropriate that we celebrate her life on the longest day of the year.

Despite the sad circumstances, it was good to see people I have not seen in years.
My aunt and cousin from Georgia came for the funeral...

My Mom's sister is certifiably crazy. She wasn't all that nice a person before her three strokes, and now she just has no restraint in demanding things she thinks she needs.
An hour after we had gotten home from the service she asked me to give her a pedicure.

I shit you not.

She really needed one and S called me a saint for the rest of the day.

My cousin, her son, who is a year younger than I, is the biggest shaved-head redneck I have ever encountered, and I have certainly seen my share. He "lays it on pretty thick," as my very patient Dad said, in terms of making up stories so people might think he's an interesting person.

The thing is, he probably is a very interesting person, but I couldn't separate the fantasy babble from the actual life events. I know we all have our problems, and some of us deal with things in different ways, but when I'm driving my Mom to the mortuary on the day after the funeral I don't want to hear about all the stunt driving he's learned how to do in his Dodge Neon. Nor do I want to know all the practical jokes he's pulled on his fiancee, nor do I want to hear him explain how he's been "electrocuted" at least five times because he sometimes works on the air conditioning vents at the hospital in Augusta.

Oh yes, the mortuary.
Unbelievable experience in the mortuary.

Grandma had requested cremation, but we had not received her urn prior to the funeral service. The woman at the mortuary showed us the small brown plastic box both my Mom and my Aunt would receive, and explained how my Aunt would take hers with her on the airplane with the letter from the mortician. Three times she explained the procedure. I think my cousin had given his mom even more valium to go to the mortuary than he had given her for the funeral. "She has blood pressure, you know."

Once my aunt saw the brown plastic box, and noticed the price of the ceramic urns or the cedar boxes, she decided since the box will be in her bedroom anyway there's "no need to get fancy," she'll "just leave Ma in the box she comes in, maybe put a photograph in a nice frame next to it." Cousin chimes in with his lazy drawl, "You could get a hot glue gun and put some plastic flowers or a little bronze name tag or something, make it nice and personalized."

I thought my Mom was going to choke, I thought I was going to faint, and then my Aunt asked the poor mortuary attendant again, "The box will be okay in my luggage, it won't make a mess, right?"

Oh, God. It was a little too close to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, in which the survivors of the matron put her into her cobbed-together pine box with her head at the narrow part so the skirt of her dress wouldn't get smooshed, and then take her body by wagon for a week to the town in which the father's mistress lives, where he gets a new set of teeth and gets married and his deceased wife gets buried on the same day. Worth reading, or you could just stay tuned for the next time I encounter those relatives, but God willing that'll be another 10 years from now.

Anyway.
I'm glad I was able to spend my childhood with Grandma, and visit her this last Mother's Day. I'm glad she is no longer in pain. Next month I'm headed back to visit Mom and Dad, and then we will be able to talk about the things we censored due to the presence of, as my Dad said, "the Southerners."

I have a photo on my desk of Grandma, standing in bright red shorts & a white blouse under a tree with Mt Shasta behind her. It's from the trip she and my Mom made when I first moved to Oregon. She's smiling with her head tilted just a bit to the left, and she is holding something I can't quite see. I love her smile. I love those hands. That's my Grandma.