My grandmother was the only constant in a rather chaotic childhood. Actually, chaotic is an understatement. Having moved about 9 times before high school, her home was the place where I always knew where to find the iron or the tuna fish. The routines and rules and storage spots never changed. When my mother was late from a work meeting or I needed help, I called gram. She and I had a very special relationship. My mother often sent me to accompany gram on errands and trips that she didn't want to take alone. I accompanied gram to stores and every week we went to see her mother, Granny, in the nursing home... where every week I watched gram cry about her mother not remembering who she was but recognizing me as "Gayle" (my mother).

My grandmother was an incredibly difficult woman to love. I really don't think many people truly could understand how much of an understatement that is because too many people say that about people who are worlds easier to love than gram. My grandmother had incredibly high standards that nobody lived up to. She didn't even live up to her own standards. It made her an incredibly unhappy woman. Most people she loved didn't know it. *I* knew it because I had that special "in" with gram. I knew her secrets. Not just where she hid money and who she helped financial and who paid her back, but what things had happened that made her heart ache--things that would torment her forever. All the things she had nobody else to tell. Pop-pop was gone and she didn't have girlfriends to pal around with. She had me. And I had her to cling to for security.

My grandmother loved her family so much that she wanted the best for them. It came across as having unreachable standards, but it was her backwards way of loving them. As a result, she managed to push people away because it really WAS hard to constantly hear about what you WEREN'T doing and never about what you WERE doing. The thing is: she truly DID love them. It was sad. And she was sad.

Oddly, no matter how much she would chide a member of our family, she would relay all of their accomplishments and strengths to other people--people outside of the family. If you weren't in the family, you never heard a harsh or negative word about her family from her. It was ironic, really. I was really shocked when I first heard her brag outright about someone I'd never heard her say a kind thing about before. And she did it whenever she had the chance.

And she walked a fine line between helping and enabling; but she erred on the side of enabling. She was more generous with her children than my parents have been with me in my entire life.

Because I spent so much time with gram and because she was always there for me when I was afraid or we were temporarily in need of a place to live, I felt a great obligation to her. That lasted most of my life and got to the point of my having to call her at least daily to be sure she was okay as her health and mental state declined, and I couldn't be with her because I had my own family to care for. One of my aunts--one who cared about her as much as I did--finally moved gram in with her about 14 months ago.

I didn't realize how much I had worried and cared for my gram until she was gone. Suddenly, I felt a huge relief. I felt this enormous responsibility removed from me. I relaxed--knowing someone was with her daily and regularly. It wasn't an easy road for my aunt, but it was a huge relief for me.

And last night as I was on my way to the airport to visit them on a trip meant for a court case, gram finally passed away. She had refused food for almost 3 weeks and water for almost a week. She closed her eyes and went in peace. She wasn't in a nursing home--her worst fear in life. She was with people that understood her and loved her for what she was capable of offering... even though it wasn't easy.

I spoke to her just as she started refusing food and she was pretty much "gone" already.

This morning I had some time to sit with my aunt and her daughter in the room gram spent the last year in. We told my cousin stories about gram--stuff we could laugh about. How gram would run through 7 names before she got the right name and an aunt would inadvertently yell "roll call!". How gram would start singing a song related to whatever phrase we had just uttered... like "Lavender Blue" or "I'm Looking Over a 4-leaf Clover" or some other old song we only know because of gram. My aunt and I exchanged the "guess what song I taught my kid"--songs that gram drilled into us. I showed her the hand throw that would tell you her level of disgust. My aunt spewed some of grams best-known phrases. And we laughed, sitting in her room.

It was a good day. My aunt and I knew her better than most. We knew she got what she wanted most in life when it came to how she wanted her life to end. We knew she was out of her misery--physical and emotional. And we were relieved FOR her.

And I know that she knows.