Happy birthday, Grandma

My grandmother would have been 99 years old today. She died ten years ago, shortly before her 89th birthday. She was ready to go. The last time Sandy and I had visited her in Nebraska, she'd been talking about who she wanted have for her pall bearers. She'd been seeing my grandfather in her dreams; she said he was a young man in them and she was clearly happy to see him. I wonder now if they were visitation dreams. As she approached death, she may have been more receptive to communication from the other side. I don't know.

Grandma, Mom, and me. September 1994 in front of Mom's
house in Portland, Oregon. It was during that visit that I decided
I wanted to be fully myself with my family, and I wrote
the letter to Grandma shortly after she returned to Nebraska.

I came out to Grandma in late 1994. I wrote her a long letter, and then I called my mom and warned her. "She'll call you, not me, if she's freaked out," I said. "Be ready." And Grandma did call Mom, but she was fine. She also wrote me, and she told me that she loved me, that I was her granddaughter and would always be her granddaughter. She didn't know much about lesbians, but she'd seen a show on PBS recently that had talked about it. I still tear up when I think about how much that letter meant to me.

Grandma liked Sandy. She met her several times, and they always got along well. The first time Sandy and I visited her in Nebraska, Grandma told Mom how impressed she was that Sandy just made herself at home. Grandma hadn't traveled much and she didn't always know what to make of Sandy. For example, one time we were there, Grandma and I were up late at night watching the news for the latest on the tornado watch. It was a familiar scene to me; I grew up in tornado country. Grandma wandered to the kitchen window from time to time and reported on which of her neighbors had lights on because they were also up monitoring the weather reports. Sandy was excited; she wandered into the living room, looking for me after she'd realized I wasn't with her in the bedroom. She sat with us for a few minutes, asked some questions, and then got bored and went back to bed. Tornado watches weren't the momentous events she'd imagined them to be, and she knew I'd drag her to the basement if anything changed. Grandma couldn't quite understand why she didn't sit there and stare at the TV screen with us.

Sandy was the one who persuaded Grandma that it was okay to buy corn on the cob at the grocery store for our dinner. Grandma had only ever grown her own or gotten it from local farmers. Her sisters came to dinner that night, and she told them that she'd purchased the corn. She was sort of proud of it; it was an adventure. Her sisters told her they'd done that plenty of times, which took the wind out of her sails a bit. But I was still proud of her for doing something a little outside of her comfort zone. I know how hard that can be.

Grandma crocheted afghans for each grandchild's high school graduation, college graduation, and wedding. I'd gotten my high school graduation afghan, but I never graduated college, so I didn't have that one. And I wasn't legally married. But a couple of years before her death, Grandma asked me what color I wanted my afghan to be; she'd be making one for Sandy and me. That was huge. In 2000, she was 87 years old, living in a town of 1000 people in the middle of Nebraska, and I'm certain that Sandy and I were the only openly LGBT people she knew. She recognized our marriage long before the state of Washington got around to it, and before some younger family members came to understand the depth of our commitment and love.

We didn't get the afghan until after Grandma died. My aunt had helped her finish putting the fringe on it shortly before her death, and she'd been very clear that it was meant for Sandy and me. We both sobbed when we received it, and we treasured it, as I still do.

Now that I have had these post-death experiences with Sandy, I'm more hopeful that Grandma and Grandpa did find each other again. They were married happily for more than 50 years before his Alzheimer's stole so much from them; perhaps in death they can be fully themselves for each other again.