98

My great-grandmother just died. My dad’s grandma. She was 98 years old, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. She couldn’t remember much anymore, she had all the aches and pains of old age. But I know my grandpa is heartbroken. Both his parents are dead. My dad seems fine, he says she’s better off now. I don’t know if he’s serious or not. He’s not a sharer.

I remember we’d go over to their house every Saturday for like the first decade of my life. Every time we did, the pair of them would foist upon us oatmeal pies, Pepsi, sandwiches, any food they had on hand. Did everybody get enough to eat? they’d ask as we started to leave, hours later. It started to be a joke in our family (we weren’t blessed with a lot of comedians).

The two of them were born almost the same time. They saw World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, JFK, Nixon, the Civil Rights Movement, the moon landing, the awesome 1970’s, the horrifying 1980’s. If you’ve seen that much, you shouldn’t die, you should just sort of live on forever as a wise old hermit or something. You shouldn’t slowly break down, your mind and your eyesight and your hearing and your bones going one by one till you can’t barely breathe on your own. It isn’t right.

I didn’t find out why my great-grandparents insisted on pushing candy, cookies, cans of soda on every unsuspecting person who entered their home until my great-grandma died. Her husband, who was always Papa Moody to the great-grandchildren, didn’t have anything growing up. Poor family, war on, stock market crash. Once he had a family he swore that none of them would ever be hungry. Not as long as he drew breath.

So there it is. Maybe it’s sappy but I needed to write it. We’ll miss her.