What it didn't say

I didn't get to know my grandmother for long enough. My mother married her son at a time when I was just beginning to fix my broken life. I was a single, uneducated mom and I needed a place to live. I was so nervous to ask her if I could live in her old house. She barely knew me, and it was a request I would have been petrified to ask of anyone let alone a woman I didn't really know. And so I asked her. And she said yes. She said yes like it was the most natural thing in the world. She said yes to a stranger who was in need of something she could give.

Who was this woman? Who was this amazing and compelling and giving charmer? We all have different ways of describing her. A mother, a grandmother, a friend, a bowler, a teacher, a story-teller, a gardener, a cook, a saver, a fighter, a survivor. She was a single mom before there was such a thing. She understood hard work and wasn't afraid of it, no matter where it took her. She stood at the bottom of mountains and climbed until she could savor the view. Even in her 80s she had youthful optimism. She was made up of such a delicate recipe of experience and inhibition.

We all have our stories that we love to tell. I remember sitting at Grandmaw's house watching Tony tinker with her seldom worn hearing aid. I remember how we all laughed when the squeak was intolerable and she sat there with a smirk. That smirk!

How I will miss Grandmaw's smile. It said so much! It radiated genuine mirth at life's funny ways but it resonated with this feeling of I-have-learned-from-this-and-you-will-too-but-you-are-going-to-have-to-figure-it-out-on-your-own. I got that look a lot. A lot a lot.

Her birds, her books, her flowers, her plastic sacks, her Mistys with the butts cut off, her insurmountable presence that has affected the lives of too many people to count. Her force, her determination, her strength, her humor, her knowledge that life is short no matter how long you live. For those that knew her, you know that there isn't a list of qualities and idiosyncrasies that would ever be complete when it comes to describing her.

She is in us, in all of us that ever listened to her stories or heard about her. We carry her sweet soul with us. On those days when the world is just too much, we can think of her. Think of her driving her big car in her sparkly hat, cigarette in one hand, sunglasses on. We can remember the Fay Yanessa we knew. The one woman who was so many things to so many people.