One year since my grandmother passed away. I miss her more and more every day, like we’re drifting farther apart on a sea, and yet I keep her in my pocket, close to my heart. I wish she’d been at my wedding. I wish I could see her, hug her tiny bird shoulders, tell her how much I love her. Losing her and Janna only weeks apart meant losing my 2 biggest champions, the 2 women who actually saw my true self more than anyone else on earth. It’s been a hard, painful year, and everything has been tinged with loss.
She’s a total inspiration – she was so much like me (or rather, I am like her) but where I am grumpy and jaded, she stayed impish and innocent forever. She went through more trauma and troubles than almost anyone I know, and she just managed it, kept on going. If I could go back in time to meet anyone, it would be her, as a young woman.
What a lovely and inspiring post. I’m glad you have such beautiful memories.
gorgeous photos, you’re so lucky they haven’t been lost.
Do you know approximately where in Brooklyn she lived when that first photo was taken? That wrought iron railing may still be around.
They lived on DeKalb – I really want to know where! She couldn’t recall the # but her father had a restaurant (I thought I snuck those photos too but I can’t find them – SO gorgeous) called the Bon Ton Cafe, also on DeKalb…
I am so lucky to have these! We went through them together a few years before she died and I pencilled in all the names and stories she told me on the back.
I only wish I had had grandmothers (grandparents, for that matter) in my life — it sounds like such a profound & special bond. It sounds as though your grandmother was a sort of twin for you. I’m sorry for your losses.
I know, so lucky to have had her as long as I did. Sean never met any of his.
i love these photos of your grandmother, she looks mischievous and knowing like she had all the world’s secrets and a bag of licorice too. this year i have been confronting the idea of my mother’s death and what it means to me now after her passing, a way of trying to find her again and not let her just drift away on that sea and keeping myself doubly open to signs and feelings or messages. it helps to keep reminders, pictures or special tokens, to think of them often, as if they are traveling on with us in a different form. i think that they are, i hope that they are. our constant companions.
big big bear knowing hugs.
That bag of licorice! Always her favorite. That is one of favorite photos of her.
I think they are with us. I swear a few nights ago I heard her voice as I drifted to sleep.
there is an amazing online archive of the Brooklyn newspaper here:
http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Skins/BEagle/Client.asp?Skin=BEagle
I think it only goes up to 1902 – so she would show up later – but perhaps something about the restaurant or her father would appear…it would be amazing to hunt down the building! or find someone with a subscription to Ancestry.com…sometimes that’s useful.
thanks for sharing a little of your memories of her.
Thanks! I do have Ancestry.com – but most of the stuff about them is from me, or her niece.
I’m so sorry for your loss. She looks like such an amazing person with a great sense of style and so lovely!
The kids were playing with dominos this evening and Ira was manhandling the case so I said, “Careful please, those were Grandma’s.” And Justin said, “Nah, she swiped them from some other old lady” There’s somebody else’s name in permanant marker inside the case, which really, I think, makes them even MORE Grandma’s.
Wow, the pictures are absolutely great. Thank you for sharing them. She looks like a wonderful woman.
I’m glad you had her in your life to cheer you on. Hold on to that encouragement and she will always be with you.
so lovely. it’s funny though, as I get older, I feel more and more loss that I didn’t have the wisdom or wherewithall to ask my grandparents more questions, get their stories (or more of them), get their advice. As I wade into marriage and families and dynamics and Life, I wish so very hard that I could ask them all sorts of questions.
Alas, pictures (and their enduring stories) are all we have…