This icon will do, I suppose, since it is a sort of touchstone of my youth, a portion of which has now passed away.

Though of course, my grandmother was part of my life for a long time, much more than just my youth, for which I am grateful. In my family, folks tended to get married late and have children late - my grandparents were all into their 60s by the time I was born. My mother's father passed away two months before my second birthday, and I have no real memories of him at all. My father's father passed away when I was eight years old. My mother's mother passed away in 2003 at the age of 95.

My last living grandmother, my father's mother, Catherine Elizabeth, went by "Lib" most of her life. When she moved out to the assisted living center in Ohio four years ago, close to my aunt and uncle, she started going by "Cathy." I think perhaps after 94 years, she was bored! She was meeting a whole new group of people, and making new friends. The most singular thing I can say about my grandmother is she was a great one for making friends. Starting with her 80th birthday, we gave her milestone birthday parties at her country club back in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where she lived from the mid-1950s until four years ago. The last one we had, for her 95th birthday, was just the extended family. For her 90th, we gave a cocktail party for her whole crew. What was amazing to me was that the room was full of people in their 70s, a whole new generation of people my grandmother had met and befriended. Admittedly, they were in the same social circles anyway, but still. She was vital and vivid and bright, right up literally until these last three weeks in the hospital.

Ever since about 1983, my grandmother has been saying to us, each Christmas, "Well, I won't be here by this time next year, it's been nice to have this last Christmas together." It moved from seeming sad and spooky to a bit of a family joke. Again, she was bright, engaged, interesting, social - I think that the holidays, after she lost her husband in 1980, just made her very maudlin. Totally understandable. As the years progressed, we still smiled at it, but every year we wondered. As she moved into her 90s and showed no signs of slowing down, we threw up our hands. If this Christmas is the last one, we thought, so be it. It has been a gift and a blessing.

And so it was.

Rest in peace, Grandma. At last.

October 23, 1909 - September 8, 2008.



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I thought about just leaving that to stand alone, but I did want to thank you all for your condolences, spoken and unspoken. I am doing well, and so is the rest of my family. We were certainly all prepared for this and it is no tragedy at all, just a natural end to a wonderful long life. I'm not going to disable comments, because some people will want to make them, but I might not be answering each one individually. Or maybe I will! For now I'm going to step away from the computer for a little bit I think.