Last week I spent in the small town of Waukon Iowa, celebrating the life, and death of my favorite Grandmother, Verna Lucille Jenkins. It may sound odd to say we celebrated her death. In reality she couldn’t have had a better life or death. She would have been 96 years old next month. She lived in her home, healthy and independent until the last couple days when she went to the hospital for a urinary tract infection and complications from that. She was in the hospital and finally she just said “I’m tired, I’m really really tired” then through some more conversations with grandchildren, her sons,a dn finally to my uncle she said “they are coming to take me away now” she closed her eyes, slipped into a coma and passed away peacefully. We could all only hope to have such a peaceful death.
My Grandmother isn’t my biological grandmother. She is the mother of my former step-father (Larry), even so, she was the grandmother I was closest too in my life. She used to come visit up at least once a year and we would sit for hours and embroider together. Sometimes hours would pass and neither of us would say much, we would just enjoy each others company while we stitched. Cross-stitch and embroidery is still a hobby I take part in whenever time permits. Thoughts of my grandmother go through my head every time I pick up a needle and thread. When I was young, before I was 16 and summers where occupied by summer jobs and boys, I spent my summer vacations at my aunt and uncles farm right outside the town of Waukon. When we weren’t running around on the farm, my cousins and I would go into town and go to our grandmothers house to eat her fresh baked cookies, run rampant through her basement ‘play area’ and swindle her into driving up to the community pool for the afternoon.
This past week was bitter sweet laying her to rest. Once again, all of us cousins were in her house, except this time it was the next generation of kids to run rampant through the basement ‘play room’. At one point the door to the basement opened and all you could hear was a gaggle of laughter from the multitude of kids that were playing, not understanding the memories they were invoking. My cousin and I looked at each other and knew without speaking we had the same memories of being those same kids, not so long ago. Going through Grandma’s pictures and personal affects we all learned that she saved every gift we gave her. I found a bookmark, and stationary I made for her when I was 8 and 10 years old. My cousin found a picture she had drawn when she was 7. We found pictures we mailed to our grandmother as we grew up, school dances, apartments we lived in during our college years, even a picture of my first puppy, Pablo, was in her photo albums. Grandma had a record of everything happening in all our lives. It was a trip down memory lane narrated by a quiet voice we all heard in our memories. I can still hear my grandmother ending each conversation topic with “ya sure youbetcha…”
Baking By The Numbers
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