good night, gma.

as i pack for sodak, i am struck by a vague sense of place. i have no desire to live in sodak ever again, but there will always be something about it. i head there under sad pretenses tomorrow morning, but there is always a nice thing about going there. flying over that quiltlike landscape speaks to me in a way i am often startled by. i know that land, i understand its quirky people (well, usually...).

as a very junior member of my family's entourage of cousins, no one will invite me to write the obituary. but i have been writing it in my head for about nine months. let me try to capture it here.

the town of hecla, sodak canceled the girls' basketball team during gma's senior year of high school. she always said they didn't know what they were talking about. to know grandma was to be taken into her world--one full of candy bowls and piano renditions of "five foot two & eyes of blue" and often surprising stories and, of course, a kind of encompassing love. she had a funny way of telling each grandchild that we were her favorite one...our age.

in the awkward moments of making new friends, i have somteimes drifted to a story about grandma playing the piano for silent films. i know only pictures of grandma from those days, but to hear her tell it, she was quite spitfire. boys on the couch before grandpa came 'round, basketball teams, bossing her siblings around.

she never made me eat food i didn't want to--none of that "eat grandma's food because she made it for you" sort of business. she always told the story of how i had, just short of 2 yrs old, pointed to my coat, asking her to take me home from the hospital where they were poking and prodding. she would tell me in secret i was her favorite grandchild my age. she would play "five foot two & eyes of blue" on the piano with such vigor that i could not wait until i reached the designated height & was a little sad to reach 5'3". i have a funny memory of the trackmeet she & grandpa sat in the lincoln watching me run around that track eight times, often in back, from the street. she loved fur coats. she hated swimming, but raised 6 kids & countless grandkids on the lake. she always felt so bad that i was allergic to ming toy. she had bottomless candy bowls. she could cook, to my mom's relief. she often told me she was praying the rosary for me. she was a force of nature--played hostess even from her wheelchair. sometimes i think she was the embodiment of a tough prairie woman; even down to her last days, it seems. matriarch could not have found a better resting place.

of course she was many things to many people. sister, mother, aunt, friend, gram. she has watched so many of them go before them. she joins them now. i knew her as grandma.