End of An Era

 

Graduation photo of my grandma

My last grandparent, my maternal grandmother, died recently. She was less than 3 months from her 90th birthday so she had a good run. 

I am fortunate to have lived as long as I have with grandparents. Many of my peers are losing parents or have lost them already and yet until four years ago, I had three out of four grandparents still alive and kicking. My paternal grandfather died when I was in my last years of college. After that I, I went decades before the losses started piling up with my mom five years ago, maternal grandfather four years ago and my paternal grandmother last year. Now it is my maternal grandmother and it feels like the end of an era for me. 

My maternal grandparents going on a date before they were married

Above is one of my favorite pictures of my grandmother when she was dating my grandfather. When I found it the first time, it was just a random loose photograph in a box full of random loose photographs but it is now one of my most treasured of them. I never knew them at this age of course. By the time my memories start up, they are already in the latter part of their work careers. Soon they would retire and move down to Florida for the next 25 years and I would only see them maybe once or twice a year for an evening on their way through Iowa. During their last handful of years in Florida, we started spending 10 days or so with them every year in the vicinity of Panama City Beach and I started to get to know them a bit better.

Then mom was diagnosed with cancer and that changed everything. After years of talking, my maternal grandparents finally moved back to Iowa and lived just across town from where I live so they could spend more time with my mom and my family. After mom's death, my grandfather died a few months later and my grandmother moved up north to be near her son who was recently retired and could take care of her better than I could with my busy family life and schedule. Covid hit and she ended up moving into my uncle's house which turned out to be for the best considering how the lock downs in nursing homes worked out. It was still close enough that I could visit her often and I have done so these last years. 

Grandma very pregnant with my mom who was born the day before Christmas Eve.

Grandma was born in 1933, the fourth of five children. Her last two remaining siblings died in 2012 and so she has been the last of her family for quite some time now. She started her career as an office worker but soon after marriage, transitioned into a homemaker and later a bus driver for the school district my grandfather was bus maintenance supervisor for. That is how I remember her in my earliest memories, driving a big yellow school bus around. 

For many years, they would take my brother and I up to Minnesota for fishing trips which my grandfather loved to do. We would spend a week fishing every morning, playing cards in the heat of the day, going swimming in the late afternoon and playing more cards and watching movies in the evening. Some of the card games aren't well known anymore, but I've taught my kids how to play one of them. I've tried teaching them some of the others too but cards just aren't in fashion with their generation. I blame shorter attention spans in this world of accessible information all day long on hand held electronics. Perhaps there is still a chance to pass those games on someday.

With her passing, I am down to one parent, a slim holding between myself becoming a patriarch of a family, something I am not ready for. 

She will be cremated and put in the shared urn with my grandfather which now resides on a cherry corner bookshelf I built for them and shared on my blog many years ago. Together they will be buried in a plot right next to my maternal grandfather's parents, my great grandparents, whom I also have many memories of during my boyhood, and whose names still live on in the names of my children. 

End of an era. 

2014