The First Draft

One of the songs on Taylor Swift’s new CD is called Marjorie, and it’s about her grandma. I’ve been listening to it a lot lately (it’s one of my favorites from that album), and it’s no coincidence that I have also been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately.

I think the holidays are when it’s the most evident that she’s gone. We all used to gather at her house, where she’d have set up 5-7 Christmas trees. My cousins would come, and my dad’s cousins would usually stop by. She’d make a hummingbird cake for dad’s birthday, and we’d celebrate that too!

This year was the first year I didn’t make the hummingbird cake. I still remember when we took her a piece of the cake I’d made when she was in a rehab facility for her hip. She’d smiled and looked up and said “you made this?”.

There are a couple of lines in the song that really stick out to me, to be honest. The first one is “how you signed your name Marjorie”. I still remember her neat, almost sharp cursive when she signed her name “Dianne”. We spent a lot of summers at her house, and days after school with her, so we watched her write a lot over the years.

The second is “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing to me now”. If there’s one thing I’ll always remember, it’s that she absolutely loved to sing. We’d go places and she’d almost always be playing the Carpenters, but even if it was a different band it was guaranteed that she was singing. She’d taught her children to sing when they were young, and I think the only thing my sister and I ever did that really “made her sick” as she would say, was quitting choir when we went to middle school.

There are a lot of little day to day things that remind me of her, too. I had painted my nails a couple of weeks ago, and the paint was peeled off and cracked and I could almost hear her telling me to either take it off completely or fix it. And I’m growing out my bangs, so they have a way of making it into my face unless I pin them back. That was another thing I think we heard a lot growing up. “Get your hair out of your face.” It somehow sounds kind of harsh out of context, but she really just liked our faces and wanted to be able to see them.

I didn’t really get to say goodbye. Not for lack of opportunity, but for lack of words to say. I was sitting at the island in my apartment in Denton when my mom called me and told me that they were at the ER, and they had decided not to resuscitate because it wasn’t what she would have wanted. It was her time, and she knew it. We’d known it was coming. The last few weeks hadn’t been great. She’d eat exclusively if dad was there with her. While that wasn’t a great sign for her recovery, I’m glad that he got that time with her before the end.

They held the phone up to her ear so I could tell her I loved her and say goodbye, but all I could do was sob. That was the fastest I ever made the drive from Denton to Wichita Falls, but she was gone before I hit Decatur.

She absolutely did not want a funeral, but that didn’t feel right so we had a celebration of life instead. As odd as it is, watching everyone talk about her at her was one of my favorite things. Dad talked about how she used to put her long hair over the arm of the couch and he’d brush it. Uncle Jon talked about her teaching him how to sing. And Aunt Lou mentioned how she had to pack up her three children, dog and cat in under 24 hours to flee during the revolution in Iran. They were living there at the time, working for the government that was being overthrown.

One of the most profound things I think I’ve ever heard a story that my dad told that day, though. He’s been in the medical field in some way, shape or form for decades now, and he talked about a patient he’d had once. She knew that she was close to the end, and he’d gone to check on her one day. She’d told him how she wasn’t afraid.

She’d had a dream, and in the dream there was a gate. On the other side she could see a field, with a giant tree in the middle. Under the tree were hundreds of purple flowers, and when she died, she was going to be one of those purple flowers.

I wish I could remember exactly how Dad said it, I’m sure it was more eloquent. But the idea has stuck with me after all this time. There’s just something about it that I can’t forget.

A lot has changed since then. She has another great-grand-dog who would absolutely have loved her. And she won’t ever get to meet Noah, but I know she would’ve liked him. I’ve started collecting plants, despite my early years pointing to the fact that I had NOT inherited her green thumb. Holidays aren’t quite the same, and the month of October has another death to its name for our family.

She’s still there though, in the turtles that I saved when she died, the cracked nail polish I scratch off when I’m not working, and the bobby pins I use to get my hair out of my eyes. In route 44 cokes, sweet tea, and hummingbird cake. And definitely in anything red and songs by the Carpenters.