The last conversation I had with my grandmother was on Thanksgiving. It was the first year I was hosting Thanksgiving at my house- the first year I didn't have to work sometime during the day, and the first time I had ever cooked (or even thought about cooking) a turkey. It wasn't just the turkey though, I was cooking everything- the whole nine yards, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, everything except the pies. I don't really like pies and my sister-in-law makes really good ones. I even made 3 loaves of bread- one by hand and two in the bread maker.
I called Grandma on Wednesday night and she talked me through what I needed to do. I got up early the next morning and put the turkey in the oven, I don't remembe what time it was. I do remember at around 8:30 or 9 realizing that the turkey wasn't cooking at all. I called Grandma and as she runned down what could be wrong she asked if I had turned the oven on. I hadn't. Now I was freaking out because our lunch was going to be so late now. I basted and turned and watched the bird, hoping and praying it would be ready to eat by 1:00 for lunch. At 11 I got really worried- not because it wasn't cooking fast enough, but because it seemed to be done. How could a 14lb bird cook in 2 hours on 375 degrees?!? I called Grandma to find out what to do. She told me how to make a foil tent to keep it from over cooking and to just keep basting it. We decided that my meat thermometer must be broken, there was no way it could be done. I finished making everything else, at 1 the bird came out of the oven perfectly cooked.
I think I called her back that afternoon to let her know it turned out perfectly. I don't remember for sure.
The died about a week later. Although her official date of death is December 4, she died getting ready for bed the night before. My grandfather had died around 36 years earlier and Grandma had never remarried, or even dated as far as I knew. We all talked about how he had come to take her while she was brushing her teeth. She passed on December 3, 2005. My 24th birthday.
She usually calls me on my birthday, but she didn't that day. I got a card from her in the mail and was going to call her, but decided to wait until the next day, I didn't want her to feel bad for not calling me first. My dad called around 10am the morning of the 4th, asking how my birthday night at the symphony had been, making sure I was really awake before he told me. I spent the next few hours crying and looking at flights, trying to get home as soon as possible.
The few days before the funeral my entire family gathered at the house my grandmother shared with my aunt, her second daughter. By the time we made it all of the preperations had been made. The wake was long, but it ended with a small service where everyone told stories about Grandma and what she had meant to them.
The funeral was the next day, in the church that Grandma went to for as long as I could remember. It was an incredibly happy service- she had planned it out. We sang songs like The Old Rugged Cross and we walked out singing Here I Am Lord. We then had lunch with the people who had been friends with her for many many years, and got to hear more wonderful stories.
While going through her things, someone found some calendars. Those calendars had something written in every day- Grandma's version of a diary. We know what she did every day for the last 6 years of her life. It is this incredible gift that she left that gives me the inspiration to write her story now.
