Dear Grandma Mary,
I wish I had written this letter to you earlier, before your mind betrayed you. Of course, dementia would have wiped away these words from your memory long ago, but I know they need to be said even though you have now passed on and left me without an audience. Despite being long overdue and true to form, I am writing this belated note of gratitude to you today with deep sincerity and send it out into the universe as acknowledgement of my good fortune.
I met my husband almost 25 years ago now, and I continue to be reminded on a regular basis of the hand you played in raising your grandson into the wonderful man he became. I am not talking about aspects of his outstanding character that certainly reflect your example. Rather, I am talking about the way he helps to make our house a home through the simplest of actions and underlying values.
More than anything, you taught Jim that a penny saved is a penny earned. In fact, he never fails to miss a penny tossed carelessly on the sidewalk and overlooked by most. Once picked up, he rubs it between his fingers and places it in his pocket, lauding your name and his good luck. These pennies are collected in a large glass jar in our home, where art imitates life as a symbol of the hard work and smart investment over the years that brought us from our days of $20 in reserves to a life of comfort and privilege. I know you did the same rising up from the Great Depression and WWII on a postman's salary and pension, and so appreciate your example.
You also taught your grandson the value of a safe and secure home, one with time and space to watch a baseball game late in the afternoon to beat the summer heat. And, in turn, Jim taught me the merits of a long afternoon nap when you sleep deep after a weary week and emerge from beneath the covers renewed, feeling better than you can remember in every cell of your body from head to toe. In the midst of a full and demanding life, the virtues of such moments of repose cannot be emphasized and appreciated enough as they show caring for the self and one another in full measure.
Practically speaking, you taught your grandson how to clean and clean well. Those Saturdays you spent vacuuming, tasking him with moving beds for you and lifting couches to get at the cobwebs and defeat the dust, may be the greatest gift you ever gave me. His full professional life precludes its frequency, but when Jim cleans, he cleans through and through. When the tedium of housework gets to be too much or the neglect becomes too overwhelming, I can count on him to step up and do it right.
When it comes to my wheelhouse, the kitchen, you taught Jim how to appreciate food, straightforward and unadorned but delicious. Your rolls and applesauce are an eternal source of inspiration which elevate the taste buds to new heights with butter and homemade jam or a bit of cinnamon and brown sugar. Your love of chocolate was legendary and one of the major food groups on which you subsisted the last twenty years of your life. Since you lived to be 96, I know I will follow your example. Of course, you did let Jim eat cookies and milk for breakfast at times, but I am willing to overlook such an indiscretion in light of the virtues of the larger culinary picture.
In fact, cookies and milk for breakfast simply reflect your lighter side. I will never fail to remember experiences between Grandmother and Grandson that repeatedly evoke the most cathartic of belly laughs whether behind the wheel for the first time in a muddy apple orchard or sitting as passenger in the back seat, struggling with cadence and emphasis in the English language. And, you never failed to lend a helping hand to family, friends, and neighbors as long as you could, even acquiring a postal run of your very own late in life to bring cheer to many in your retirement home.
You live on in Jim's quick wit and loving ways, his work ethic and helping hand, and I couldn't be more grateful. I believe that we are passing some of these things onto our children in honor of your legacy. Please know your efforts, and I know it wasn't always easy, have not gone unnoticed from someone grateful to have joined the ride.
Peace and love to you.
XOXO
