Monarchs In Memory

Grandma Miriam was like a second mother to my sister and I.  Back when we were growing up, there were no freestanding daycares like there are now.  SHE was our daycare and she was a darn good daycare provider!  She would take us to the park, bake cookies, read to us before naptime on her couch, let us make messes, and would pretend she didn't notice when we snuck too many cookies. We thought we were so clever, but she knew.

 

My Grandma Miriam was a smart woman. She had a degree in business and was also an AMAZING piano player. Back before sound came to the movies, she played the backgroud music for the silent movies.

 

As I became a grumpy teenager, she was there when I packed my bags and "moved in with her" for awhile. She didn't get mad when I backed into a parked car with her little Dodge Omni THE DAY I got my driver's license. She gave me advice the best she knew how through my very rough teenage years.

 

As my Grandma got older and more frail, my mother, sister and I would take her for rides to feed the ducks. Fall was always her favorite (and most dangerous) time of year. She would swerve her car in the direction of any tree with beautiful turning leaves. Being a passenger with her during the Fall was the most frightening time to drive with her.

 

My Grandma Miriam was always so proud of my sister and I. She attended every event, whether it be a choir concert or graduation. My sister and I got baptized in our twenties in our church and she sat proudly in the very first pew with tears in her eyes as we vowed to follow God.

 

When my Grandma broke her hip a few years before she passed away, I visited her in the hospital. She introduced me to all the nurses by saying, "This is my grand daughter, Dawn, and she is going to be a nurse." I remember that same day, I brought a book to read to her while she was recovering. It was Shel Silverstein's Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back. She was laying in her bed with her eyes closed while I read. I could get her to belly laugh once in awhile with the silliness that is only Shel Silverstein. She eventually fell asleep, and it made me think of all the times she read  my sister and I to sleep for our naps on her couch. How the tables had turned. Her body was old, but she still had her "sparkle". Once in awhile, she would look at me and wrinkle up her nose and wink. It was such a small gesture, but it meant so much.

 

The night my Grandma Miriam passed away, I was not with her. I was with her earlier in the evening when she was admitted to the hospital. She introduced me, again, to the nurses in the usual way: I was going to be a nurse someday.  I was worried about her, but the doctor told all of us to let her rest and go home. If I would have been a nurse then, I never would have listened to that doctor and stayed by her side.  She winked at me that night before I left, showing me her last bit of sparkle.  I hugged her and told her I would be back. Those four words still haunt me. "I will be back."

 

My mother and I went home to let my Grandma rest. A few hours later, we got a phone call that we should hurry back to the hospital. When we got there, my Grandma Miriam was gone. I cannot get over the feeling of leaving her at her most vulnerable time. Some people try to make me feel better by saying that maybe she didn't want me to be there when she passed. All I know is that I feel like I failed her by not being there for her.

 

When I left the hospital, I went home. I climbed the stairs to my bedroom in the house my Grandma Miriam grew up in and got out Shel Silverstein's Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back and I read to her. I read to her just like I did that day in the hospital. I read to her and apologized to her for not being there when she died. I also asked her to please let me know in some way that she could hear me and that she had forgiven me.

 

When my children were old enough, I told them about their Great Grandma Miriam and how much she would have loved them. She would have read to them, played the piano and baked cookies for them. She would have let them sneak cookies just like she let my sister and I. I told them what a special lady she was. All of my children, at one time or another, have wrinkled up their noses and winked at me the same way she did. It makes me wonder maybe she is closer than I think.

 

I wrote a song for my Grandma shortly after she died to help with the guilt I felt for not being there for her. It helped me to let go.

 

When I started rearing monarch butterflies and learned more about "El Dio de Los Muertos" (The Day of The Dead), I decided to tag a buttefly and name her after my Grandma  ---- Miriam.