Memory is a capricious thing. We often regret the things we don't remember, wish we didn't remember the things we do.
My memories of my grandmother are, like most memories, mostly random snapshots and impressions that don't really add up to a person. Many of them revolve around breakfast, as my grandmother and grandfather were both notiorious early risers (much to my consternation when I was 12). I remember the smell of oranges, which they ate every morning, and the smell and sound of frying sausage in the kitchen.
I remember how she laughed -- loudly and often, like most everyone in our family. Her wit was sharp and quick and wouldn't let much slip past. She had about her an obvious sadness, too, from a dificult life that most of us couldn't even imagine. Her mother died when she was very young, from an "accident" when her alcoholic father was "cleaning his gun." Her first husband, a gentle man whom she apparently adored, died of a heart attack when my mom was only six or seven. Her second husband -- the grandfather I knew -- was an evangelical minister who ruled over his wife, his four children, and her two with an iron fist. He was a complex and often hypocritical person who certainly can't have been easy to live with.
I remember Grandma once telling me, "You have a lovely back" when I was trying on a dress for the high school senior formal. I was embarrassed; it seemed like such an intimate and old-fashioned thing to say to a teenager, but I was secretly pleased. I still think of it sometimes if I glance over my shoulder in the mirror at my rather ordinary thirty-something back.
Although my grandmother and I weren't close as I got older -- her religion and the loss of mine divided us more than I would have liked -- the memories I have of her are scattered but fond. She was a warm, vibrant woman who should have had an easier, better life even before Alzheimer's took her memory from her. I wish her funeral could have reflected more of her life and the person she was, and I wish I'd said something that day.
