(Overheard at) Grandma's Funeral

[cimorene]

Last Tuesday I rejected a call from my dad while I was in with my therapist. It was a notification that my maternal grandmother had died of a heart attack and my mom was on her way home from work to pack for the 11-hour drive to Kansas for the funeral, because she hadn't wanted to be embalmed. I did battle with ebookers for hours, leaving only 5 hours to pack, shower, and take a little nap before getting on the bus to the airport in Helsinki.

My grandmother was only 72 and the heart attack was almost completely unexpected (although it emerged the locals had known she was having chest pains for the last week, but she thought it was a digestive thing). She and my grandpa had been planning to start moving out of their town house to their little farm in rural Kansas the next week. That is, this week. Now he's going to be alone there.

My mom, sister, and one of my twelve cousins met me at the Kansas City airport about 24 hours later, at 11 pm Central (7 am Eastern European time). The next day I got dressed in my dressy black clothes for the funeral because nobody had informed me we were taking an hour-plus drive into the countryside to have an outdoor service and it was going to be cold and the other people were going to have on jeans and boots and we were going to be standing and/or hiking extensively.

Anyway, I did appreciate the ceremony and I was glad that I was there and really glad there was no minister, just speeches from my cowboy uncle's MC-trained bff and my cousin who is a millionaire housewife with the time to kill to find a non-embalming funeral home and fast-track the application to register a corner of my grandparents' farm as a graveyard inside a couple of days (because otherwise you can't bury someone there). There was more talk about Jesus than I liked (basically I only like it in the context of historical debate...), and surprisingly little of my grandma's more catholic obsessions (namely angels and the virgin Mary), but it didn't matter too much.

Overheard at Grandma's Funeral

by my sister, between two of grandma's brothers:
HAROLD: Do you let the kids shoot bulls in the balls with bb guns, yet?
STEVE: No, I don't even let them shoot dogs. I gotta watch them close when they go out with guns now.
HAROLD: Why not?! We did it all the time!

also from my sister:
STEVE: I stole one of our dad's parachutes and took it up on the roof of the garage and was gonna jump off, but I met Harold on the way and he was older and he wanted to take the first turn. ... That parachute didn't even flutter.
[HAROLD COMES IN]
STEVE: I'm tellin' the story about the parachute!
HAROLD: Which one?

by me:
MOM: Dad, how long did you have to court Mom before you asked her to marry you?
GRANDPA: I didn't ask her! I told her!
MOM: Well, did she say yes anyway?
GRANDPA: Well... I had to tell her a couple times.

*

GRANDPA: I was in the Navy and grandma was the pinup girl for the whole squad.
[EVERYONE LAUGHS]
GRANDPA: No, I mean literally.

*

GRANDPA: I had a look around for the picture of her in her bathing suit from when I was in the Navy and that other one - [mimes breasts on his chest] - that was just the top, but I couldn't find them. She never did hang them up. For some reason. Can't think why.

*

GRANDPA: I was real protective of you kids. If anyone threatened you, like if there was a dog... one time there was these dogs that was scaring all you, barking and growling when you would walk by... it couldn't reach all the way to bite you or nothin' but it was too close to the sidewalk. And you kids come home cryin' and so I got my bat and I went walkin'. ... I didn't go walkin', you know, that wasn't something I did, but that day I did. And the cop pulls up beside me - the town only had one or two of 'em. And I guess there musta been something about the way I walked. And he says, Where you goin', Lastname? And I said, I'm goin' to kill me some dogs. So he says, Why don't you give me that bat and go on home and I'll take care of the dogs. So I didn't kill 'em, but they got moved back farther from the sidewalk.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you for posting. And I'm glad you could be there.

[laurajv]

I'm sorry to hear about your grandma. Loss is never easy, but sudden loss is so...sudden. Jarring.

[viggorlijah]

I'm so sorry to hear about that. I hoep the trip back is calmer and quieter.

Also, this is terrible but your quotes cracked me up because all I could think was "no-one in that generation could've been vegetarians"

[cimorene]

No, all the food weirdness is in my generation - peanut allergies, gluten- and red-meat-free diets and my sister's short vegetarian phase when she was a teenager. I've been no red meat for like 10 years but they always remember right AFTER arranging for the food ("Oh wait, Cim, you can't eat any of this except this one side dish, can you? Is that all right?" "Yes, because I already filled up on nachos." "Cool.") It's not a party without three or four kinds of chips on the table in the midwest.

[foursweatervests]

It sounds like you have a really lovely family, and that you all went to some effort to remember your grandma with a lot of love and cheer. <3 I hope you're feeling okay.

[cimorene]

I think it all balances out to pretty okay. It was a shock, and in some ways I'm feeling more or less affected than I expected, and in other ways I haven't figured out what I expected because I never thought I'd have to deal with losing these grandparents for another ten or fifteen years at least. But I'm doing all right.

[foursweatervests]

It's awful, even when you are expecting it. But I'm glad you're doing well.

[kay_mulan]

Oh my darling dearest twin, I wish I could give you un abrazo con suenos calientes y mittens of silk, californy growm from silkworms with hearts of gold.

[cimorene]

thank you ♥