building home

I am in the final stretch of moving into my new place. The move started in February...and is just ending now.

This new place feels perfect. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about houses and home. Concepts that, from the name of my blog, you might understand are important to me. While only temporary, this place does feel like home.

The townhouse community I live in is not unique and has no real character. I have no privacy...but I feel safe...and that is a trade-off for privacy I'm willing to take. Right now, at this moment in my life, I like living inside a buzzing neighborhood. Children chase each other on their bikes, basketball games break out in the cul-de-sac, I can hear the sounds of a friendly barbecue across the street, and the ice cream truck drives through every single evening. In some ways, the physical aspects of this place make me think of Seeger's rendition of "Little Boxes" (yes, it's really Malvina Reynolds' song, but I prefer it sung by Seeger...with The Decemberists as a close second). But right now I can set aside my distaste for architectural homogeneity and just live.

I knew that when I moved, I needed to create a home, not just a place to live. I needed to be surrounded by the things I love. I shed the things that really didn't matter. Certain items that mattered some, but not that much, have been packed in boxes for some future home. But mostly I needed to create a space of peace, where I feel serene, where I can look around and find comfort.

This space needs to be me...it needs to represent my life with my girls...not be some shadow of my former home. The challenge was in taking these existing things and making them new. I have surprised myself with the things I have pulled out to incorporate in my home...things like my Grammy's teacup collection. My mother grew up disliking her mother's collection, so most of them were sold at the auction following the sale of Gram's home when I was still a child. But Gram kept a few. And while kind of fussy...and not really "me" at all...I pulled them out of a box and sat them out...because they are comfort. They take me back to being with Gram. They are a cup of contentment, if you will.

I have filled the walls with pictures. Too many pictures, really. The chickadees' first birthday portraits and the stages of their early lives hangs in one space. In another, is black and white photography of family....the ancestors. Everything from my great-grandmother's portrait taken with her girlfriends in the late 19th Century, to my parents' wedding picture.

I am usually one to let some wall space just be empty. But here, I needed something different; a cocoon, of sorts. So...the merits of empty space be damned...you will wait for me until the day I am willing to pack up those teacups. This is the home I need right now. It feels good and I am at peace in this place.

memory dump

Since this is my diary...of sorts...and I want to remember the last four days, I'm going to record some of the events around Grammy's funeral.

Alzheimer's is an awful disease.  It robbed us all of this woman who was so integral to our lives.  But it took her from us years before she died.  It took her in a way that makes it incredibly hard to grieve.  I cannot feel sorry that she's gone.  She needed to be gone.  The horrible thing is that I'm having trouble remembering the good part.  The last time I enjoyed my grandmother was more than 10 years ago.  It was probably more like 20 years ago...at the time of my wedding.  Since that time she's just been slowly fading.  My mother put it best and I'm going to share that with you in a minute.

But first I want to say a word about my mother.  Yes.  She frustrates the hell out of me.  She drives me nuts and makes me spitting mad.  However, in many, many ways she is a wonderful woman.  She wrote the following over the course of the last three years.  Actually she wrote it three years ago when Grammy was put on Hospice.  She recently edited it when Grammy was put on Hospice the second and last time.

She asked my brother and I to read it at the funeral and again at Gram's graveside service, which was in another town...miles away and next to my Poppy's grave.  It is a beautiful tribute to a very special lady...and that's what my Grammy was...a lady. 

I think I'll probably spend this week doing a brain dump about Grammy.  I really haven't been able to wrap my brain around this and grieve.  I'm not sure when it's really going to hit me, full force.

In the mean time, Mom's words:

Remarks of Remembrance of Evie…by her daughter

99 years was it. It was a long time, and she let us know it was not what she expected! But she was a fighter and not one to give in or give up. You can all smile a little now, because we all know that she was not at her best during these last few years. I have to tell you it surprised me that her “spunk” was a quality her caregivers seemed to appreciate and admire.

The leaving of life at the end of one’s ninth decade is not an occasion for tears. When a person has lived a full and loving life, its end should be seen as the final step of a wonderful accomplishment. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile rather than tears. The highest tribute we can pay her is not grief but gratitude.

My parents worked in the Family Food Center together, Monday through Saturday, Mom in and out through the day, Dad staying until after six (and we were all there until at least midnight on Saturday.) In between all that, they did their share of the things necessary to be good citizens of Plainview. Every Sunday family gathered to talk politics, worry over the weather and the crops, play cards, and eat. Mom loved being a part of feeding everyone.

My favorite worrywart is gone. We used to tele-fret every day. Was Ross running too hard? Were our children eating right? Was I feeling okay? Had she unplugged the iron? It was always a comfort to know that, no matter what others may have thought of us, there was a little old lady upstate (and later across town) worrying about us. She delighted in the grandchildren Ross and I gave her and was happy to include L and J on her worry list.

It has been a long goodbye from those days until today. I have been a long time mourning the person that Mom used to be. The fact is, she has been like a photograph long exposed to sunlight, and all that time I have wanted the mother I always had. She was very fond of fun and shrewd about people. She taught us all how to be and showed us the way. At her best she could charm the birds from the trees. But lately she often asked if there were something she should be doing that she was not doing. She wanted to do the right thing and was afraid she wouldn’t remember what that was. More recently she said, “My heart hurts.” It was all I could do to reply, “So does mine.”

It is the end of near-royal status as a daughter, my little family’s simplest comings and goings followed and sometimes recorded, with neighbors and relations always updated. I should probably apologize for the glowing reports I suspect you received. This curator of my family museum actually retired a few years back. I have had to decide where to relocate memorabilia of a life well lived - generations of pictures, letters from family and friends long gone, certificates of appreciation for her volunteer work, significant china, silver and glassware, and numerous other things important to our history such as the quilts she and my grandmother made. She was a cornerstone of my world, a link with my past, but losing her has opened a door to wonderful memories.

I’m sounding a little sorry for myself today. I no longer have her to do it for me. I am diminished because I just lost one of the best jobs in the world -- being her child. But I take comfort in knowing that she is truly home at last. And one day we’ll meet again.