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My Grandmother is Gone
By Greg | January 10, 2007
The call came through last night from the United States: my grandmother died in her sleep, apparently having suffered a massive stroke. She was 92. Today, my baby daughter is 16 days old, and her great grandmother Florence is 1 day gone. The two will never meet.
I last spoke to my grandmother by phone just a few days ago. It was one of those awful conversations where I couldn’t hear properly what she was saying, and afterwards I reassured myself that maybe it would be better next time. Although she would already have been told of our daughter’s birth soon after the big event, I told her about it again, as I knew she would have forgotten: “oh, well that was nice”, she said, when I told her Hannah Sophia had been born on Christmas Day (see “Our Christmas Baby Surprise!”). The only other thing I am certain she said was “I love you, too, sweetheart” at the very end of our brief conversation. So ended my last contact with Florence H. Mulhauser, the great grandmother my daughter will never meet.
The last several hours — I guess it’s been almost a whole day now as I sit down to write this — I’ve been pondering little memory snippets of my grandmother. I spent a lot of time with her and my grandfather Ray when I was a child and we all lived in Missoula, Montana, but I also fondly remember visiting their place on the shores of Flathead Lake, picking cherries in their orchard, or travelling about with them. I remember helping her with her laundry. I remember in later years how she doted on my parents’ dog. I remember how she used to watch the Weather Channel and let me know what to expect for any part of the world I might be visiting (including any layovers on long airplane journeys).
I remember that she used to delight in making giant pots of truly exceptional clam chowder soup; since she and my grandfather, plus my parents and I made a total of 5, she would usually make enough to feed 15 or so. Seconds were pretty much a given, and sometimes thirds or even fourths. She would bring the big pot over to the table, and in would go the enormous ladle. The ladle full of soup would be almost to my bowl before she’d ask, almost as an afterthought, “would you like some more?”. Then, right as the bowl was getting full, she’d empty a ladle into it before exclaiming “just one more!” and making another round trip between the seemingly bottomless pot and the almost-overflowing dish in front of me.
The other most memorable culinary creation from my grandmother’s kitchen (and there were many, and they were tasty!) was homemade pumpkin pie, which she took great fun in dubbing “kapunka pie”, just because she knew it annoyed me. She knew I loved the stuff she made, though, so I guess she was entitled to wind me up by incessantly calling it by the silliest nickname ever invented for a food. I sure would like to have some of that kapunka pie now.
Food really was one of her pleasures in life, and she and my grandfather and I often went out for restaurant meals, preferably with “all you can eat” specials. Perhaps it could be traced to the fact she was a teenager during the Great Depression, or perhaps it was just because she prized value for money, but either way, she wanted to make sure everybody ate their fill — especially me! Often she’d come back from a trip to the salad bar with something extra on her plate just for me (even though of course I was filling my own plate at the same salad bar). And there was never any question about whether I would be having dessert at the end of the meal (don’t be silly!). However much she ate or my grandfather ate, a main measure of the success of the meal seemed to be how much I ate.
(You see, my parents systematically starved me as a child, and sometimes the only food I got to eat all year was from that giant pot of clam chowder or the all-you-can-eat special at a local restaurant.)
And it wasn’t until many years later that I realized this was a hallmark of many of our activities together: a main measure of success was how much I enjoyed the experience. When we would travel together and stay overnight somewhere, it didn’t matter so much to her whether my grandmother got to use the pool or the jacuzzi, and it didn’t matter much to my grandfather whether his bed was comfortable or warm: if I liked the pool, or the jacuzzi, or the bed, then that seemed to be the main thing. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how keen they both were to see that I had fun, or ate well, or got my exercise, etc.
It wasn’t really because my parents starved me that she tried to stuff me full of food, and it wasn’t because I was somehow deprived that she wanted to make sure I got to go in the pool. I think it’s because she and my grandfather both took genuine pleasure in trying to do the best they could for me. They were grandparents, for goodness sake!
And that is why I am so completely sure that she would have been over the moon to be able to meet her newest great grandchild, our daughter Hannah Sophia. That is why this time of euphoria surrounding the birth of our daughter now combines not just with the grief of bereavement, but with the seemingly unstoppable sadness that the love of those two ends of the generational chain will never come together.
My grandmother is gone.
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