Remembering Gran...

Gran

Yesterday we said goodbye to Trevor's grandmother, who we all lovingly referred to as "Gran", in a beautiful, music filled service over at HPUMC.

Gran was fabulous.

She passed away suddenly last Wednesday (August 17th). Gran had broken her hip on August 1st, but she had undergone surgery to repair it, had moved back home to C.C. Young and had started rehab.

The day before she died, Gran had gotten her hair and nails done, and was "holding court" in her room while visiting with friends and family.

Again. It was all very sudden.

She was on her way to rehab when it happened. The nurses had helped her into her wheelchair, when Gran complained of being "tired" and wanting to "go be with Charlie" (Trevor's grandfather). Then she passed out. She was gone before the nurses could even dial 911.

Despite the fact that Gran's memorial service wouldn't be held for over a week, Trevor and I cut our trip to Colorado short, and arrived back in Dallas last Thursday. It has been a long last ten days, and we are both still reeling from the experience.

I was lucky to know Gran for nearly a decade. In so many ways I thought of her like one of my own grandmothers, and was so looking forward to introducing her to her first great grandchild this winter. She knew we were having a boy, though (she was hoping for a girl, but knew from the moment we told her that we were expecting on Mother's Day that it was a boy). I only wish our son could have grown up knowing Gran and experiencing her antics firsthand. Because, again, the woman was fabulous.

Here are a few of my favorite memories of Gran. I'll probably add to this list from time to time as stories occur to me. The woman was one in a million:

• Gran was born in 1920 to a mother who thought - at 50 years of age - that she was going through menopause. Except nine months later, here came Gran. Gran was the youngest of four daughters, and was literally the hidden track at the end of the CD. Because she was so much younger, Gran had neices and nephews that were closer to her own age than her sisters.



• The first time I met Gran was back in the summer of 2002. Trevor and I had just started dating, and he arranged me to have dinner and meet his family one evening at Buca di Beppo on Park Lane. I was so nervous, and desperately wanted to make a good first impression. So, it should come as no surprise that I had an allergy attack within minutes of meeting everyone and sitting down at the table. My eyes teared up and I couldn't stop sneezing. It was so bad that I couldn't see to excuse myself to the bathroom. One, I had no idea where it was, and two, I couldn't see to find it. Before long, I was a snotty, wet-eyed disaster while everyone just stared at me. Not exactly the first impression I was hoping to make, but - let's face it - things rarely work out the way I plan them to.
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trevor's grandmother with her hand down her blouse searching for something in her bra. At first, I thought I was seeing things. That is until she produced a small pouch or coin purse from underneath her left boob (I would later learn that Gran referred to her bra as her "upstairs purse"). She opened it up and dumped the contents out on the tablecloth. Among the various items were at least fifteen different kinds of brightly colored pills. She separated these from the rest of the stuff and started going through them. After a few seconds she selected one, picked it up and handed it to me while saying, "Here you go darling. I'm pretty sure this is an allergy pill."



• Trevor told me there were two rules when visiting his grandparents.
  1. Always pee beforehand.
  2. Never eat anything his grandmother gave you - especially warm chocolate.
  
  
  
• One Christmas, Gran gave everyone items that she had "won off of people playing Bingo". Trevor's mother received a pair of red, satin panties and Trevor's uncle got a blue vibrating "neck" massager. This prompted a series of questions regarding where, exactly, Gran was playing Bingo.



Gran handed out a lot of under garments over the years as presents.


• The woman LOVED the Texas Rangers. I found it very fitting that the Rangers won the night Gran passed away.



• An example of Gran's cooking: Canned asparagus covered in mayonnaise and topped with deviled eggs. Served warm or at room temperature.



• For years Trevor and his brother, Spencer, didn't have to buy toilet paper or cereal because Gran would horde it from C.C. Young. When Trevor and I moved in together, these Gran care packages continued to arrive on our front door step once or twice a week. Since she knew I didn't eat meat, Gran also started to include random pieces of fruit. Sometimes the fruit was several weeks old by the time it made it our way. Once we received a half eaten container of pimento cheese in the middle of the day one summer. Of course, we didn't come home to discover it for hours. There were ants.



• One time I met a woman while getting my nails down that worked at C.C. Young, and asked her if she knew Gran. Her eyes got wide and she told me that just last week Gran had come up to her at the front desk and asked her to do her a favor. The lady said she would, and Gran sat down next to her, propped her feet up on her desk and asked her if trim her toenails.



• Gran always liked to have her face on. Once she couldn't find her eyebrow pencil, though, and made the decision to fill in her brows using hot pink lipstick. According to her, pink eyebrows were better than no eyebrows at all.



• I will always remember Gran in nothing but her bathing suit and high heels coming out to greet us in the driveway. One time she had a t-shirt on over her bathing suit, and was walking down the sidewalk carrying a bouquet she'd picked of her neighbor's flowers. Except where the shirt hit, it kind of looked like she had forgotten to put pants on. Trevor claimed this is how she always dressed in the summer.



• The woman LOVED Jack and Coke. And snickers.



• She was known to carry a flask in her upstairs purse.



• Gran told me once that she skipped school to attend the 1936 Centennial. She and the boy she was with decided not to pay to enter the fair, and climbed over a fence instead. They were both caught and arrested. The first time she told me this story, she said she was taken downtown and her father had to come and pick her up. However, she later claimed that she was able to talk her way out of being carted off downtown and the cop let her and her boyfriend go.
  
  Gran got mad at me for telling Trevor's mom this story. Apparently, she was concerned that the police might still be looking for her, and didn't want the story to get out. I did my best to convince her that I was pretty sure the statute of limitations on sneaking into a World's Fair 70+ years before had probably run out decades before. I don't think she believed me, though.



• During one family meal, Trevor's uncle was about halfway through a longer pre-meal prayer when Gran suddenly said, "Amen!" and started eating.



• Every Thanksgiving Gran would insisted that Trevor's mom make dinner with all the fixings, and then she would only eat a tiny amount of stuffing before announcing she was ready for dessert. Trevor's mother would tell Gran that she would have to wait for everyone else to finish eating before moving on to the next course.
  
  One such Thanksgiving a few years back, Gran sat there for a few minutes before reaching for Spencer's plate, scraping the food off onto hers and stacking his plate under hers. Spence, who had been engrossed in conversation with his uncle, didn't notice, and stabbed the table with his fork where - a few seconds before - his turkey had been. Gran, with a smile on her face, turned to Trevor's mother and said, "Spencer is done, too. I'd like pie now please".
  
  Gran won.



• When Gran broke her hip on August 1st, the doctor offered her morphine to help with the pain. Gran refused, though, because she didn't want "to become an addict". When she was reminded that she'd be on morphine after her surgery the next day anyway, she briefly considered it. Not to ease her pain, mind you, but because she was curious about the effects of morphine and wanted to experience it with a clear head.



• She cheated at Skip Bo.



• Everything Gran saw, heard or experienced was the best. The best sermon, the best wedding, the best movie, the best book review. She only remembered the good things in life. Never the bad. She might be the only person who was alive and aware in November of 1963 who had no memory of where is was or what she was doing when JFK was shot.



• Trevor can't count the number of times Gran asked him to rub her corns on her feet. Apparently, this was one of those duties she expected from her grandsons. He still shudders when he thinks about it.



• At Moo's funeral back in January of 2009, Gran commented to several of my friends that she hoped her service was as well attended as my grandmother's was. Then, she asked each of them if they would come to her funeral when the time came. They did.
  
  Gran's service was actually so packed that they had to move it from the smaller Cox Chapel into the main sanctuary.



• Gran taught Sunday School to former First Lady Laura Bush while living in Midland.



• Gran's doctor told Trevor's mother once that he thought Gran was starting to go senile. Trevor's mother just smiled and told the doctor that her mother had always been that way, and that Gran was just fine thankyouverymuch. She was.



• Gran would invite herself over to my mother's for dinner or [fill in the blank] holiday. On one such occasion, Gran told my mother that she needed a drawer in her house that she could call her own. When my mother inquired what the drawer was for, Gran responded that she needed a place to store a tube of Poligrip.



• Gran was a doodle.



• Gran was famous for her presents. At Trevor's uncle's birthday party in July, Gran gave him (among other things) a book, a half empty bottle of shaving cream and a dented can of Chef Boyardee overstuffed beef ravioli. This was the same party where she ignored Spencer for half the meal, and refused to answers his questions - even though he was seated right next to her.



I was usually the recipient of various items of her bedazzled clothing.


• I love to remember Gran on her 90th birthday with her hot pink boa and sunglasses. Have I mentioned that she was fantastic?



• At the bridesmaid luncheon the day before Trevor and I got married, Gran told me I could call her either "Gran" or "Janie". But I was to NEVER EVER call her Mrs. Hill again. She made me choose right there on the spot. I went with "Gran".



• When she broke her hip earlier this month, Gran started talking about how she wasn't going to live to see her next birthday in September. When we reminded her that she needed to stick around for the baby, Gran smiled and said that there was a picture that she had given Trevor's mother. That picture was going to be Gran's window from heaven, and she'd watch the baby grow up through it. She also implied that she had already given the picture to Trevor's mother, but Trevor's mother had yet to hang it up in her house. Gran said if Trevor's mother didn't hang up the picture, she wouldn't have a good view from heaven and she would be very sad. We still have no idea what picture Gran was talking about.



• Trevor told me that when he was little, Gran used to put either hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice or spit in his hair when he walked by. The first two where to keep his hair extra blonde. The third was to tame his cowlick.



• Gran loved the sun.



• Gran at 90 somehow got a hold of a tube of Retin-A that she had ordered from Mexico without a prescription. She had heard that it could help diminish the look of wrinkles. She used it all over and then decided to sunbathe over at Trevor's uncle's house. This resulted in a second degree sunburn.



• When Gran had her hip replaced five or six years ago, she failed out of rehab. She just didn't do pain.



• Gran was stubborn.



• After her husband passed away, Gran once volunteered to help lead a group field trip of Alzheimer patients to the Dallas Zoo.



• Gran was a wonderful artist. She loved to paint and draw. Despite being talented in her own right, she would often sign paintings done by others and pass them off as her own. Only upon closer inspection could you see that the real artist's name was crossed out and had Gran's name written over it in nail polish .



• During the Great Depression and the second World War, there was a chewing gum shortage. Gran LOVED gum, so this really affected her. For the rest of her life she was known to hoard gum even though her son brought her Sam's Club sized packs whenever she claimed she was low. But it wasn't just packs of gum that she kept. She also couldn't bear to throw away already chewed gum. Hence, wads of gum could be found all over her apartment, her in purses, etc. Apparently, previously chewed gum was better than no gum at all.



• Trevor and Spencer said that whenever Gran saw a butterfly, she claimed it was her sister checking on her from heaven.



• Gran loved holidays. Any holiday. She would always dress up festively and decorate her apartment accordingly.



Spence and Gran,
Christmas Eve 2010


• The contents of my last present from Gran back in July: An empty, yellow make-up bag, a baby quilt, a pair of PJs with black scottie dogs and snowflakes all over the shirt and pants, a box of Q-tips and cotton pads from The Myconian Collection, the May 2011 Monthly Calendar of Events at C.C. Young and a "Happy Holidays" paper placemat with a snow man on it.



• Gran wanted to buy our baby his first stroller. She saw a double stroller...somewhere...and called to tell Trevor about it. When Trevor commented that we only needed a single stroller for now, Gran replied that we could strap the baby in on one side and a dog on the other.



• Trevor received a baby blanket from Gran five or six years ago for his birthday. This was long before Trevor and I were engaged, much less married. It was blue with pink accents. Gran said it was appropriate for a boy or a girl. We weren't pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant. This blanket was among other items including a half empty travel sized bottle of Listerine, a used toothbrush and half a tube of hemroid cream.



• Gran was a very attractive woman and used to model for Neiman Marcus and Kodak in her youth.



• Gran never referred to Trevor's mother as "her daughter" in public, in birthday cards or really, well, ever. On the flip side, Gran would also not allow Trevor's mother to call Gran "mother". Gran insisted that Camilla call her "sister" and signed all of Camilla's birthday cards as "Janie".



• Gran set her bed on fire by accident a couple of years ago at C.C. Young. A lamp had fallen down between her bed and the wall, and - over time - the bulb heated up Gran's comforter and started to smoke. Gran smelled the smoke, but only in her bedroom. She ventured out into the hall, but - seeing no fire and smelling nothing burning - returned to her apartment and climbed back into a bed that - by this point - was on fire. Eventually the fire alarms went off and the fire department arrived. Luckily the fire was contained to Gran's bedroom and no one was injured.



• There was the time Trevor and I went over to visit Gran and Charlie, and Gran answered the door in a long sweater and panty hose. We didn't think anything of her outfit until she bent over to stoke the fire in the fireplace. Anticipating what was about to happen, I looked away. Trevor, on the other hand, was mooned by his grandmother. He yelled, "Gran! Where are your pants!" Gran just stood up, turned towards Trev with a smile and said, "I've got hose on darling."
  
  
• Before moving into C.C. Young, Gran and Trevor's grandfather lived in a house with a swimming pool. There was also a cabana in the backyard that you to walk past the pool in order to access. According to Trevor, Gran was constantly falling into the pool on her trips to and from the cabana at all times of the day and night and during all seasons.



• I never had the opportunity of driving with Gran, but Trevor says it was "terrifying".



• At our wedding reception, Gran couldn't wait to eat a slice of the chocolate groom's cake. She kept trying to convince people to go and cut her off a piece on the back. She thought no one would notice if it was cut properly. Finally, when she could get no one to do her bidding, she approached Trevor and more or less demanded that he go do it for her. I guess she figured he could since it was his cake and all. Trevor refused. She then started in on how we couldn't expect people to wait so long to eat cake, and needed to bump it up on the schedule.
  
  To this day, I'm still kind of surprised she didn't just decide to dig in regardless. That woman loved her chocolate!



• Gran affectionately called Trevor "Tweb-bee" and Spencer "Spency".
  
  
• Gran donated her body to science, which is kind of strange (considering her age) and strangely perfect all at the same time. She was a woman ahead of her time.

Again, this list will most likely be updated from time to time as other photos pop up and memories or "Granisms" occur to us.

If you had the opportunity to meet Gran and have a story you would like to share, please add it in the comments section below or send an email HERE. We want to keep her memory and unique spirit alive for generations to come!