So. That Was January.

Oh, what a shit January. And February isn’t faring much better. I’ve been drafting this piece over several weeks and it’s time to just POST it before it gets much longer. Here’s what’s been going on.

While Chris was away in Nevada to spend time with his dad, I got the news that my grandmother had suffered a serious stroke. Chris returned home with an ankle so inflamed that he couldn’t put weight on it, let alone walk. I panicked about work, kids, and constantly simmering stress. I did everything around the house that required movement. Chris was in a LOT of pain. The girls wouldn’t stop bickering. I was DROWNING at work.

A couple days later, Grandma Eunie died. I left work early and had a flight for the following night booked by the time I got home.

I knew I’d take a kid with me. Chris wanted me to take Charlotte, as she has the trickiest schedule to cover. So, I met her at the bus stop.

“Why are YOU here?” she asked, expecting to see her way-more-fun nanny.

“Grandma Eunie died. Hey, what do you think about going to Seattle?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What?!”

"Yeah, I know.”

“Oooooh, so I get to see Baby James!”

“Charlotte,” I said. “We’re supposed to be SAD.” Then I felt bad for killing her joy. “But yup, we get to see James!”

She was quiet as we walked home. Then she asked, “Mommy? How old is Grandma Eunie?” Note her use of the present tense.

“Eighty-nine,” I answered.

She thought about this. “And how old is Omi?”

Ah. I knew where she was going now. I answered her.

“And how old is Nana?”

I answered that too.

"Okay,” she said, mollified. “They’re not eighty-nine. And I’m only six. So they won’t die until I’m old like you, right? When I’m thirty-five?” These were the first of many, many questions over the coming days.

“Your grandmas are healthy,” I said. “Don’t worry about it right now, okay?”

Friday, January 20^th was a miserable, stressful day. It rained. Trump became president. Schools were closed, so I had Charlotte home with me. I had to pack. And I had more work to do than I could do.

I had stayed up late the night before, trying to get through what I could. Then I worked my tail off until my flight left Friday night. Charlotte drove me absolutely batty and Chris yelled at ME for yelling at Charlotte. It was a huffy ride to the airport. My stress level was absolutely off the charts—and I hadn’t even had two seconds to process losing Grandma yet.

Well. Because of the inauguration, the airport was deserted on the ticketing side. I walked right up to the counter. Then there was literally NO ONE in security. It was almost creepy. I had TWO TSA agents helping me get my crap through the x-rays. And I really didn’t need any help.

“I’ve never seen Dulles like this before,” I told the agent, tossing my laptop into a bin.

“Lady, I KNOW,” he said.

Once we got into the terminal, ARRIVING flights full of pink-clad protestors spilled out. Due to NO LINES, Charlotte and I had time to kill, so we parked ourselves in an “outside” part of a restaurant, Mommy taking a breath and having a beer and Charlotte watching the so-called nasty women and bad hombres descend on DC. After such a shit day, it was unbelievably heartening. If the freaking airport was this full of hope and energy, I cannot imagine how incredible the actual march on Washington was.

Once we got to Seattle, everything was weird and bizarre and stressful. My dad asked me to perform (piano) at the memorial service, which I reaaaaallly wasn’t prepared to do. So, shit. I also put together Grandma’s biography (“life story,” I preferred to call it), which created quite the fireworks show during the editing process with my padre. It turns out that family dynamics get amplified during times of stress.

But we got our shit together and the funeral planned.

The viewing was . . .  weird. I brought Charlotte. I’m sure some people will think it was inappropriate, but I really think our society deals horribly with death, keeping it sterile and behind closed doors. I also think this increases our terror of it. At any rate, because Charlotte had no memory of Grandma Eunie and therefore no emotion attached to her death, I decided to expose her to EVERYTHING.

The viewing was strange because Grandma didn’t look like her. And, um, at the risk of sounding crass, it was REALLY obvious she was . . . not alive.

And you know what?

Charlotte finally understood.

Try explaining the concept of a soul or burial to a six-year-old. They just don’t get it. “How can you be buried AND go to heaven?” Charlotte had asked. “And how do you know the way to heaven? How do you know how to get there? How can you not be in your body if you’re you? How can you not breathe? How do you do that?”

But bless her little curious nature, my girl just walked right up to casket and took a long look. She wasn’t frightened. Then I had her sit next to me on the couch and we stared at Grandma. My dad, uncle, and aunt were there. “Do you see how Grandma isn’t inside her body any longer?” I asked.

Charlotte nodded. Like most kids, she had been confused about burial. “That’s why it’s okay to bury her,” she said. (I later found out she thought WE were the ones who had to dig the hole. Poor girl!)

“Right,” I said, “because Grandma has gone to heaven. She’s all done with her body.”

And the next day, at the burial, after the casket was lowered into the ground, she marched right over and looked into the hole (which we did not, by the way, dig ourselves with gardening shovels).

“That’s fine, Charlotte,” my sweet aunt said. “You can look.” Then all of us adults (it was just immediate family there) exchanged glances. We sort of all wanted to look too.

So, standing in the drizzle, we all gathered around the hole and looked down.

“Huh,” said Dad. “I didn’t know they put that concrete around.”

“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t know it would be so deep.”

“Huh,” said my brother. “Good luck digging out of that.”

At which point we all burst out laughing. I have no idea what the funeral home staff must have thought of us standing around an open grave laughing at an inappropriate one-liner, but hey. As my aunt said, “She would’ve wanted us to laugh!” Hopefully it was true. And I hope people laugh at my burial.

Meanwhile, I looooved getting to see my nephew. He’s an 8-month-old chubby ball of jolly cuteness and I just wanted to snarfle him all the time. Charlotte absolutely loves her cousin James, so she was almost like a built-in babysitter. She never got bored of playing with him on the floor, which was convenient for all of us.

All the while, I stressed about playing my piece. It was not performance-ready, and because my brother didn’t have a piano, I was at the mercy of the church office—40 minutes away—to unlock the sanctuary for me.

I got ONE practice session in before the funeral.

Which MAY have led to Dad and me (as first-born son, he had to give the eulogy) ransacking my brother’s liquor cabinet before the funeral for a bit of liquid courage. “It’s about timing,” my dad said sagely. “We have to take a shot at just the right time.”

Guess what?

MY DAD LEFT THE LIQUID COURAGE IN THE CAR.

“What?!” I cried, as the family lined up for the processional into the sanctuary. (See, not even *I* will take liquor into a church sanctuary.)

I was a bit distressed, as I had been in tears a mere 30 minutes prior, telling my mom I couldn’t play the piece adequately (I had done two disastrous run-throughs before people started arriving) and all she could advise was: “How about I warm up your hands?” Yeah, she had NOTHING she could tell me. She totally knew I was screwed.

In case it’s unclear, I’m still a little girl when it comes to stage fright. Seriously. My hands shake and I lose the control I so deeply value. Piano was probably not the best instrument for me.


Well, the funeral was starting and Dad had left the vodka in the car. My name and piece were already printed in the program. My relatives were banking on me playing, my dad especially. There was not a damn thing left to do but make an idiot out of myself, publicly.


The funeral took place at my parents’ (and Grandma’s) home church, the one in which I was raised, the building which my dad built, the sanctuary in which Chris and I were married. My dad’s eulogy went well. Then I played and it went . . . fine. Not great, not disastrously. I so wished I could’ve played it the way it SHOULD have been performed for Grandma . . . but I did my best. And, let’s not forget, without a whit of help from Tito’s vodka.


My duty done, I could relax a bit. My Grandma’s brother, a good reverend in Georgia, did the service-slash-sermon and did a fantastic job. We finished with the hymn “It Is Well [with my soul],” which was an apt ending. I decided that I too will have that song at my funeral. (Chris: take note.)

Afterward, we saw tons of people and made tons of small talk and at long last made it to the dinner where This Girl threw back a glass of wine. Then back to Maryland.


Digging out for work was hectic (this is an insanely busy season for me at work), Charlotte had her birthday weekend, the girls’ schedules are busy busy busy, and Chris has switched between crutches and hobbling about. And he is in A LOT of pain. (He had an MRI—surgery is a possibility if this damn tendon won’t heal.  His half marathon in New York in March is utterly and completely not-a-prayer OUT.)


Because of the craziness, combined with events that are not mine to talk about publicly (yet), I really haven’t had much time to contemplate the end-of-an-era that is Grandma Eunie leaving this earth. It comes in dribs and drabs. I’ve started a post about her, but I can’t quite seem to finish it. We’ll see. For now, here we are.

Come spring, come.