Dear Grandma Bessie

  I was just thinking the other day about the day you died. The hospital wouldn’t let me come up to your room because I was only 13, those were the days when you had to be 15 to enter a patient’s room. I knew it was going poorly because they let me come up. I think dad and maybe one of the boys talked to them and told them they better let me see you. I was intimidated and overwhelmed. Hospitals were dark and gloomy in those days. There was a light over your head, and you were so pale. You patted the bed, beckoning me to sit with you. I thought my clothes would just fall off from shaking so bad. From that moment everything went into fast forward and stood still at the same time. You wanted me to tell you that I remember everything you taught me. I told you I remembered the important stuff, but I didn’t know how to chain stitch. You said "that’s ok you can learn that later" You wanted to know if I remembered the things you told me about singing and being happy,that if I was sad to sing a song and I would feel better, and that if I was sad and caught myself singing, that I wasn’t so sad after all now was I.
  You told me you wouldn’t be coming home again, and that I had to be very strong and remember how you told me this was going to happen. I already knew that, see I knew you very well. I knew by the way the back door opened if I was in trouble or not, I knew that when you called me Amy Jo that you were being silly, cause you never called me that. I knew that everyday that I came home from school you would be there weather permitting rocking on the front porch, I could just barely see your head over the railing as I walked up the street from the bus stop. And, if the weather was bad, you would already have the door open so I could run in. I remember cream of wheat or rolled oats every cold morning of my life and how you told me neither one was worth eating if you didn’t have brown sugar. I remember sitting on the linoleum floor in the living room with my face as close to the black and white tv as I could get. Jack Parr was it, or Andy Williams or maybe Bonanza? You would tell me to "slip back from the set" threatening blindness by age 15. Did we think there were some alien rays coming thru the tv or something. I remember when Grandma Anna would come up from Huntington, every spring. Donald would drive her in that little VW Beetle. They would unpack and the spring-cleaning would commence. I remember on cold nights when you would let me sleep with you in your bed and we would do ‘back to back’ when we curled in backs together and fight off ole man winter. My little grandson and I do that now, only he calls it bac-a-bac.
  I also remember standing in front of your casket, knowing that my life would never be the same again. I stood there while they read things from the bible and told a bit about you and your life, but I didn’t really hear any of it. I was too busy grieving and trying to make sure that I did what you told me. Later at the cemetery, still, concentrating on making sure that I followed your instructions. That has been the one constant in my life….that I did that one thing that you told me to do with your dying breath…..and I do grandma, I do remember you.