Reminiscing

I don't know why, but today I woke up in a reflective mood. I've been thinking about Grammie and Pa all day. There are tons of memories in their house and some days I wake up thinking about what I miss. So I figured I'd let you in on my thoughts.

I miss:
~Playing Pinochle- Grammie and I would compete against Pa and AJ. We usually gathered on Friday afternoons, but sometimes we would play other days as well. Pa could never understand how AJ would win so much. If Grammie and I were lucky we might beat them once in awhile. Us girls considered this time social hour which bothered Pa immensely.

~Watching Grammie "do a jig"- Sometimes when I walked in Grammie would burst into a jig and tell me how she had danced that morning while brushing her teeth. She would then proclaim that she wouldn't listen to that tape anymore while teeth brushing as she was afraid to scrub her teeth completely away!

~Hearing about "free baseball"- Whenever their Atlanta Braves had to play more than 9 innings due to a tie, Grammie considered that "free baseball."

~Ham- Now I know this one seems wierd, but stay with me. Pa loves ham. It seemed like every other trip to Albertsons resulted in a ham in the fridge. Grammie would say to me, "Guess what we're having for dinner?" Then she would add that I needed to take some for lunch the next day. If we were really lucky, Grammie served it Friday night to everyone else when they came and then we didn't have as much left over.

~Oreos- The cookie jar was always full of Oreos and whatever other cookie Pa brought home. (Oh wait a minute, it had Oreos in it until I found out I'm allergic to them and now the candy jar holds candy bars that I can have. Thanks to AJ.)

Carmen and I have talked about it and we both have dreams of Grammie being better. We dream that she's standing in the kitchen doing whatever it was and when we walked in she warmly welcomed us. When we wake up, we both realize it was just a dream and that makes it worse.

I do have to say that I am glad I have had the last 21 months with Grammie and AJ. There are days when Grammie is hysterical and I know that the "old Grammie" is still there, but other days I just love on a woman who loved me for so long and so well. The last 4 weeks, she has been quite lucid and it's funny to be with her because you don't know what she'll say. For example, I went over Friday after having been sick for the week. Grammie looked at me and said, "You'll never know how much I love you! You look pale!" What could I say? I reminded her that I had been sick and that I was going to go home and take a nap. Then she said, "Your eyes look hollow!" Well, at least she was observant, but from her observation I might have been worse off then I really was.