passing

[dragonlady7]

This looks like another mundane entry but it's not, really.

The big football game between St. Joe's and Canisius is tomorrow, so there's a dance at St. Joe's tonight, and their music is ridiculously loud. Chunk-chunk-a chunk. Ugh. Oh boy, they've got a bonfire.



Dave's mom invited us out for a fish fry tonight, so we wandered down to the restaurant halfway between our houses and met her there. She told us that Dave's Gram was in the hospital and not in good condition, so she was going right after dinner to see her, and would we like to come? We said yes.

So, after dinner, we made the drive out to the hospital, getting stuck in construction traffic and discussing better ways to avoid that awful intersection at Kenmore and Main. We made it to the hospital and there was construction there, including a noisy pressure washer at the main entrance.

We got a little lost, and had to double back to the main desk to find out the room number. Finally we made it to the right floor, and Dave's mom stopped to ask for a mask, because she has a cold and Dave's Gram has been weak for a while and they've said to be careful not to give her a cold.

While the nurse was going to get her a mask, another nurse asked us which room it was, and shook her head. "The doctor was just in there," she said uneasily, and just then Dave's aunts Jean and Carol came down the hallway in tears.


"She just passed about five minutes ago," Carol said.




So, we went into the room, and hugged everyone-- Aunts Jean and Carol were there, as was Carol's son John (Dave's cousin), and we all sniffled. Jean triumphantly produced a roll of strong, soft paper towels from the foot of the bed, and handed them out. Gram never went anywhere without paper towels-- that kind of paper towels, mind you, the good kind. And she always kept one or two bunched up, tucked up either in the waist of her shirt or in the sleeve of her shirt, or occasionally down the front of her bra depending on what she was wearing.

Jean had been down south at the beach with her husband Tim for a little while, but she came back yesterday. "Ah," the nurse had said to Carol when she had explained the schedule, "then don't expect her to hang on much longer. When the close kin arrive, then it's not usually long until the end."

So, the six grandsons will be pallbearers-- Carol's three boys, and then Dave, and Jean's two girls' husbands.
"And you'll be with my girls," Carol said to me, blotting her eyes. She was the one who was most eager to include me at Dave's dad's funeral.

Gram was the one who always asked me when Dave and I were at family events "so when are the two of you gonna get married?"

Jean's two girls arrived in a few minutes, with Tim, having called from the road to say they were coming and the hospital shouldn't "take her away yet". I wished I had a camera, because the three women standing together over the bed, backlit by the flourescent light, were beautiful, Jean holding the crying Julie against her, and Jenny standing beside Julie with Jean's hand on her shoulder, looking quiet and sad.

There was some debate over which of the family members was going to pick up the paper towel habit. "I refuse," Julie said, insisting on taking Kleenex from the box.

But it was determined that (Dave's sister) Krista had the German potato salad recipe, Jenny had the ham salad recipe, John (and Julie) had the poppy-seed bread recipe, and Carol had the oyster stew recipe.

John said quietly that they'd been ready for this a year ago, when Gram had to go into the nursing home. The extra time with her, he sighed, had been a blessing, and it was just as well she was gone now: she'd been ready to go. She was eighty-six, and I think I last saw her at her surprise birthday party, when she cried and cried that we had come all that way with such a cake, such a cake we fed to everyone on her floor, and we sang happy birthday for everyone who'd had a birthday that month (including one woman's whose birthday was that day and she had no family to remember it), but everyone knew it was Harriette's cake because she has such wonderful daughters (and a daughter-in-law), and even her great-granddaughter Kailyn was there, aged almost-three, with her curly hair askew charming the entire floor and all the nurses too.

I don't know when the funeral will be.

Mrs. Harriette W. Kleinschmidt had three children, eight grandchildren, and about ten great-grandchildren. I could be missing one or two here or there. I'll surely have a copy of the obituary later.

She always called me "darlin" from the day she met me.