Grandma

I've decided to break up Mom's pictures and journals into mini projects. The first item of business is her baby book. By breaking it up I hope it won't be so overwhelming and I'll eventually finish. I'm not clear yet on what the finished product will be. It may be too much to print everything. CDs for all in the family may be the way to go.

I finished scanning Mom's baby and girlhood pictures the other day. I am now typing up my Grandma Hall's handwritten text in Mom's baby book. Quite unexpectedly, my thoughts have been with my Grandma Hall these past few days. In the past I haven't taken effort to remember this grandma. She died when I was in 8th grade and was the least favorite of my two grandmas. Where my Grandma Peck seemed put together and productive, my Grandma Hall was spacey and unkempt. I know my impression of her as a person is certainly biased by the fact that I showed up at the end of her life to witness her final years of decline. I'm sure my grandkids will giggle at me too when I use the burner to heat up soup in a plastic bowl. Part of the reason I felt ill at ease around her was the fact that she had a twitch in her jaw bone so that her bottom dentures were always swishing past the top dentures like a sideways pendulum. It didn't help things either that she'd make toast for me and always take a bite before serving. Her voice was a little off too. It sounded as if a cold was always coming on or there was a perpetual frog in her throat that could never quite be cleared. She loved poetry and Shakespeare and would surprise guests by randomly reciting memorized sonnets, Robert Frost, or Emily Dickinson while perched in a heap on her pink couch.

Life off of that pink couch had not been that great to Grandma Hall. In April, 1922, when Grandma was 15, a chicken coop explosion on her family's farm claimed the life of her 48 year old father, Martin and her two baby sisters Ruth, 6 and Mabel, 4. Grandma held Mabel in her arms while she died from third degree burns. In those days there was no grief counseling. The best anyone ever did for Grandma was tell her to be strong and not to cry. She worshiped her father and loved her little sisters. I can't imagine how heartbreaking it was for her to ignore that trauma and the grief and move on with life as she was told.

When Grandma was 25, her older brother Guy killed their mother with a .32 Special Rifle and then turned the gun on himself. So in the space of ten years, she lost her father, mother, only brother, and two sisters to horrific events.

A creepy picture of Guy with Buttons the horse circa 1924. No amount of Photoshop lightening could get his face to show up.

My mom said that her mother was not emotionally available throughout much of her growing up years. Grandma took frequent week-long trips to mental hospitals where she'd receive shock therapy. Later she'd come home with prescriptions for anti-psychotic drugs. I'm sure all the medication and the grief suppression took Grandma away so she couldn't be the kind of mother she would have liked to have been. My mom suffered and was insecure the rest of her life because of this abandonment.

Grandma Hall pictured with my mom (age 6) and her brother John (3).

As I look at Mom's pictures as a little girl, I can't help but see the resemblance between her and Nicky. I thought of how much my grandma must have loved her little curly haired blond girl just as much as I do mine. I feel sad for her that she wasn't able to show that love because of all the hard things that happened to her. My thoughts on her love were verified by a little passage in Mom's baby book. Grandma had three children and then suffered with infertility for 10 years. My mom was the baby that came after those 10 years.

Grandma wrote about her 2 month old baby,

"We all make so much over her. Aunt Callie called us silly. If she had wanted you for years and then had her dreams come true, she would be thrilled and a wee bit silly also. We are so happy and thankful for you baby dear. May you ever be just as lovely as you are now. Daddy comes in every time he has a minute just to peek and kiss you Meri De. You haven't a name yet. Your sister Barbara and your brothers want you called Dorothy. I wish you could tell us what you would like best. Meri De is different and I like it very much."

They ended up calling my mom, Mara Dee.

I hope being in Heaven there with her tragically lost loved ones has healed all Grandma's wounds. I hope someday she will be able to convey the love she has to my mom. I hope she already acts as an angel watching over and loving my mom. I feel very close with my Grandma as I work to make something beautiful to remember the woman we both loved and shared, one as the mother and the other as the daughter. Coincidentally, Grandma Hall died sweetly and peacefully at the age of 82 in her sleep on December 23, 1989 -- her father's birthday.