91.9 Years of Good

While I was driving to work this morning, I talked to my mom, who had to inform me that my grandmother died yesterday. This is the one we were going to visit in Ohio two weeks from now for her 92nd birthday. That trip is still on, but has turned into a memorial service instead of a birthday party.

She was my last grandparent, the one to whom I was closest, and I am devestated that the Cricket never got to meet her. I really wanted to get a photo of four generations of a direct line of women: Grandma, my Mom, me, and Cricket. That photo will never materialize. Grandma was a huge influence in my life--among other things, she gave me my first book of Shakespeare and taught me to sew.

In college, my roommate Andrea once made the observation, in looking at the shelf that housed all my books, that not a single one of them had a broken spine. That's Grandma's influence. She once caught me putting a paperback book open face-down--to mark the spot because I didn't have a bookmark handy--and told me one should never, ever treat a book that way. I must have been 8 or 10 years old. Ever since, I have treated books with the reverence she taught me. Hence the shelf full of unbroken spines.

She valued education above almost everything else. Her mother was a college graduate, as was she, which means that when the Cricket graduates from college, she'll be a fifth-generation female college graduate.

I could go on and on, but I have to work (yeah, right). I wanted to try to call her and ask her to hold on for another couple weeks. I guess she just couldn't.