My grandma passed away last week. When my grandpa passed away just over a year ago, I wrote a short thing for the funeral. My cousins and I stood together at the front of the chapel, and my sister and I took turns reading it. I try to imagine what my year-ago self would have thought if you’d told me we would be having a funeral for my then-healthy grandma just a year later, and also that the funeral would be outside in the 90 degrees because of a global pandemic. In a way it seems fitting that my grandpa left us in a dramatic fashion–relatively suddenly and amid buckets of loved-one’s tears–while my grandma slipped away more quietly, leaving us feeling surreal and numb, and letting the current condition of our country/world have the spotlight instead. Even though we didn’t get to have quite the funeral that she might have envisioned for herself, my sister and I still stood with my cousins and read about her and what we want to remember. The format is the same, and the content similar, some of it even copied directly. I think being together for 70 years intertwines two people in a lot of important ways. The newspaper obituaries are impersonal and generic, and I thought I’d share these here because this is what I wish they could have said instead.
Paw Paw
After Paw Paw passed away last weekend, a few of us spent hours at his and Maw’s house flipping through hundreds and hundreds of photos. Maw has one of the most incredible photo collections I’ve ever seen. The pictures are a collage of Paw Paw’s entire life—there are photos of his parents, his childhood, his brothers and sisters, photos of boats and weapons in the South Pacific, 70 year-old photos of him and Maw looking like movie stars, photos of our parents growing up, and then photos of us from infancy to today.
Of the hundreds of photos that spanned Paw Paw’s 95 years, and even the years leading up to them, nearly every photo features the same subject—our family.
Paw Paw’s family was the center of his world. He was the foundation which our families were built upon—it’s not a coincidence that his children still live within 5 miles of each other and that half of us grew up on the street named after Paw Paw’s father. Paw Paw understood the kinds of bonds that are permanent. Both of his parents passed away before any of us were born, but for my entire life, part of me has felt like I knew them. I knew them through the photos and the endless stories passed down from Paw Paw and our parents. In a way it’s like they aren’t really gone because they lived on through their children and their grandchildren, just like Paw Paw will keep living through our parents and through us. One day, his future grandchildren that he didn’t get a chance to meet will grow up feeling like they know him, too.
We’ll tell them how beautiful his and Maw’s azalea bushes looked every spring, and how dozens of birds used to swarm his bird-feeders. We’ll tell them how he used to find the where the best blackberries grew every year so he could tell us where to pick. We’ll tell them about how he ate more crawfish and drank more coffee and Coca Cola (or “ko-koler”) than any other person on Earth. We’ll tell them about his generosity, how he’d always sneak us gas money, and how he tried to force every morsel of food in the house on anyone who visited. About how he used to feed the neighborhood pets, even though he sometimes pretended he didn’t like them. About how much he valued the simple things in life, like waking up early to sit on the porch swing as the sun rose, and falling asleep while reading a good book. We’ll tell them about how he and Maw got to spend 7 decades loving each other. We’ll tell them about every Christmas Eve at Maw and Paw Paw’s house, and how it was one of the best days of the entire year. We’ll tell them about how in the days after he passed away, we found photos of all of us hanging on the wall of his bedroom.
We’ll tell them about how how resilient and strong he was—how we never even saw him sick until he was in his 90s. About how he grew up during the Great Depression, then fought in a nightmare of a war, and how in spite of the reasons he could have been pessimistic, he chose to live a life full of love and happiness. How even during the last couple of months of his life, he told us every time we saw him, I’m feeling pretty good. He taught us about the importance of family and the importance of memories, and he taught us how to share the stories that matter most. And though he won’t be able to tell his stories anymore, we’ll keep sharing them for him. We’ll always miss him, but he won’t be forgotten. He’ll keep on living through us.
Maw
Since Maw passed away on Friday, we’ve spent hours flipping through hundreds and hundreds of her photos. Photos of her and Paw Paw looking like young movie stars, photos of her parents and our parents, photos of our entire lives, photos of laughter and joy. Maw was an incredible archivist, even though she would never have used that word to describe herself. She kept a vast collection of photos and detailed scrapbooks documenting seemingly every birth, marriage, and death that happened in Henleyfield in the past century. When Paw Paw passed away last year, we learned that we needed a copy of his military discharge papers in order to have the military play taps at his funeral. I do not know another soul who would hear this news, calmly retreat to a back room, and come back with uncreased 75 year old documents. “Oh, I just had them in my folder,” she said. We pored over this same collection of photos when Paw Paw died, amazed at how thoroughly his life was documented, but something I didn’t realize until looking through them all again this time was how often Maw was the one behind the camera.
I think this is something that was often true for Maw. She was the support for everyone around her, the one holding up the spotlight for others, the one who wanted to help everyone she knew without any recognition. Before we were born, Maw used to be an Avon representative. She’d travel door to door trying to sell beauty products to the women she met. For 20 years Maw gave all her free samples to the women on the route who couldn’t afford to buy Avon products, and she brought their children Christmas toys every year. On every Christmas Eve in our memory, we would find gifts under the tree for people we’d never met. A neighbor down the street. A friend’s cousin’s new baby. A new boyfriend or girlfriend she just found out the day before would be joining us. I never met anyone more generous or more subtle about their generosity.
I also never met someone stronger or more resilient. Maw had quadruple bypass surgery when she was in her mid-70s, but no one even remembers the details because she never complained for a second, never slowed down, and never acted like it was a big deal before or after. In the late 80s, she went to Walmart and asked to talk to the manager. She told him, “I want you to give me a job right now,” so he did. She started working as a door greeter the next day, and kept working there for the next 28 years. She loved working at Walmart and only stopped a few years ago to take care of my grandpa. At 89, she spent months going to the hospital or the nursing home every single day to sit with my grandpa for hours. She never stopped to rest, never complained, never left him alone except to sleep, and always arrived with perfectly styled hair.
When I think about Maw, I’ll remember how she welcomed everyone. Every person she met was invited in for sweet tea and a meal. I’ll remember how she never hesitated to speak her mind. She was honest and sassy and she would let you know just what she thought, but she was always calm and dignified. I’ll remember how she cooked my favorite meal for me every Sunday for lunch for 18 years. How much she loved Sunny’s pizza and going to eat at the fish house. How we spent our childhoods watching the VHS cartoons she collected for us in her living room. How her azalea bushes grew to the size of small houses. How she insisted on giving us gas money, even after we had jobs of our own. How she woke up at 3:00am every morning to cook breakfast for her and Paw Paw, and how they’d sit on the porch swing as the sun rose. How she and Paw Paw spent 7 decades loving each other. How we spent every Christmas Eve at Maw and Paw Paw’s house, and how it was one of the best days of the year. How she was born during the Great Depression, lived through a World War, and lived long enough to meet a great, great grandchild. How I can still hear her telling us, “Ya’ll stand over there and let me make your picture.”
Maw taught us so many things by example. She taught us how important it is to collect memories. To recognize moments of joy as they happen, and to be able to share that joy for generations and generations. She taught us about the importance of having a marriage filled with laughter. About the importance of family. To always speak our mind and to remain kind while doing so. And to always, always invite people in, offer them coffee and tea, and welcome them to our table.
Though we will always miss her, we’re so lucky to have known her and to have these years of memories. I imagine the reunion she had with her parents, her brothers and sisters, and Paw Paw, who has certainly been waiting for the past year for her to come on and make the two of them a pot of coffee.
