Gampy,
It has been four days since Ganny’s birthday. And now I have awoken to the first birthday of yours without you here in this world. It is a Wednesday, which means it’s a workday and I’m up before dawn, the Manhattan sky still dark, the only time New York feels like a quiet small town. This is my favorite time of the day. It was yours and Ganny’s, too.
Late on Ganny’s birthday, Henry and I were absent-mindedly talking about the following day and parenting logistics as I scrolled on my phone. I came across a video someone had posted to celebrate her life. It is a video I have watched many times, a tribute to Bob Hope by the two of you. You and Ganny start out reading the script on the teleprompter. Then Ganny slips on a line and you’re both soon in hysterics, laughing uncontrollably. You try to redo the speech but end up laughing even harder, your face in your hands.
“Humor helps,” I recall Ganny saying.
Henry and I watched that clip and rewatched it. At first we were laughing, and then, overcome with the thought that I will never hear those laughs again, I felt my laughter dissolve into tears. And now again I’m weeping, missing the two of you, your joy, and your uproarious laughter.
Love,
Jenna
We tried to get to Maine as often as possible in that final year of Gampy’s life, knowing that any gathering could be our last with him. Losing our grandma had sapped some of his life; she was his enforcer, too.
When we planned his ninety-third birthday dinner, we weren’t sure right up until the last minute if my Gampy would be able to attend. After my grandmother passed away, there were times when this once-social man, who commanded every table, would avoid all company, preferring to take his meals on a tray in front of the television in his room, his headphones on, enabling him to hear Mariska Hargitay’s voice more clearly as he watched episodes of Law & Order: SVU. He was tired. But I also thought it must have been hard for him to sit at the table, my grandmother’s empty seat next to him.
As dinner approached and we made preparations, we began to doubt the guest of honor would appear. Then suddenly there he was, dressed sharply in a blue polo shirt, his wheelchair parked at the head of the table, Sully by his side.
The dinner was beautiful. My uncle Marvin and aunt Doro were there, as were my parents and Henry. At the end of the meal, my Gampy blew out the candles on his cake, which read, Happy 93rd birthday, Dad! He drank a glass of milk with his slice, just like the children.
AFTER DINNER, AS relatives went off to tuck babies into beds, put dishes in the dishwasher, and walk dogs, my cousin Jebby and I sat at the table with our grandfather. Because of his Parkinson’s, sometimes Gampy struggled when speaking. But on this night, he conversed like his old self. With the girls asleep upstairs, I was able to focus on him fully.
“How are you, Gampy?” I asked him once we were sitting quietly. I knew it wasn’t a question anyone had asked him lately. I’d seen how difficult it was for my dad and his siblings to see their once-strong father in poor health. They preferred to speak to him about shifts in the tides and the news rather than to dwell on the loss he’d endured or on his fatigue. No one wanted to see our dear Gamps in pain.
“I miss Ganny,” he said. He answered the question immediately, and the bluntness of his response shocked me. “I miss her so much. She was a great wife.” Then he burst into tears.
The moment he muttered Ganny’s name, I, too, began crying. I reached for him and he leaned into my arms. We held each other for a long time, tears soaking our collars.
“Do you think I’ll miss her less later?” he asked me, his voice hoarse.
My younger cousin Jebby, always good at leavening the mood, said, “Remember the trips she took us all on when we turned sixteen?” He started telling stories about her, particularly stories about times she’d chewed us out, whether for making a mess, breaking a dish, or borrowing their car without asking.
Soon there was laughter breaking through our tears.
We all thought we were our grandfather’s favorite, but Jebby probably really was. He was a great fisherman and spent full summers with them when he was little. Gampy and Jebby had fished all the great rivers together.
We were interrupted by the sound of tiny feet on the stairs. Jebby’s daughters, Vivian and Georgia (named after our Gamps), came down to join the party. They kissed Gampy on the cheek, and then Jebby left to put them to bed. My Gampy and I stayed at the table, talking about our Ganny, until all the light had left the sky.
We told story after story—how Ganny had read to us, how she had scolded us, how she had always given us the best advice. How being in Maine without her was hard. How she’d made us better. He asked me about work and about my life, too.
When my grandfather at last went to bed, I found my dad, telling him, “You’re not going to believe it, but I just sat with Gampy for two hours and it was one of the most profound moments of my life. We talked about missing Ganny, how sad it is without her.”
“Write it all down,” my father said. Of course I didn’t. I fell asleep immediately.
Now that I’m back at the house for the very first time without our Gampy, it’s all coming back to me. It’s Father’s Day weekend again—a weekend we have spent for many years in Maine by the sea. I’ve brought Mila and Poppy. They took their shoes off right by the door, just as Ganny taught them to, and they sprinted into the house, slamming the screen door, calling out, “Grammee! Jefe! We’re here!”
As I entered the house, I navigated my way around stacks of boxes. All the belongings from my grandparents’ house in Texas had been shipped here. My seventy-two-year-old parents, grandparents themselves, had spent days clad in workout clothes sorting through these boxes and reminiscing. Any box might be filled with precious keepsakes that needed to be extracted from a pile of half-burned candles, torn paperbacks, bent clothes hangers, or dingy baseball caps.
There were piles of things to give to family members and to throw away and to donate. Half the dining room table was covered with dozens of items that didn’t quite fit in any pile: a ceramic pig vase, assorted plaques, a Masters golf drink coaster.
“We’re here!” Mila called again. The house was unusually quiet with just my parents and us, instead of the family members who usually came spilling out of every room to greet new arrivals whenever the front door opened.
“Why, hello!” my mother called, emerging from the recesses of the house. As my parents took Mila and Poppy to show them their rooms, I walked around in the strange quiet. The coat closet was still filled with my grandparents’ things. A wool coat of Ganny’s smelling of mothballs. A pair of fishing waders Gampy hadn’t worn in a decade but that still somehow carried the scent of the sea. A goofy red baseball cap with a three-dimensional fish that Gampy wore to make us laugh hung beside one of Ganny’s floppy sun hats, worn to keep the sun off her face while she gardened. How odd it felt to see their belongings here without them.
We fell asleep that night in seconds; we were exhausted from the hard work of unpacking and the emotions that being in Maine conjured.
The next morning the girls raced into what was now their grandparents’ new room, the one their great-grandparents had lived in for fifty years. Mila and Poppy snuggled in between their Grammee and Jefe, just as Barbara and I once did with Ganny and Gampy as they read the papers. Sitting across from this scene, I was overcome with nostalgia and thoughts about the finite nature of death and the inevitability of change.
My grandparents’ La-Z-Boy recliners were gone. Two new chairs—belonging to my parents—sat in their place.
“That’s where Great-Gampy used to sit,” Mila said. “But it was a different chair, right?
“Yes,” she continued, answering her own question as only six-year-olds can. “He sat there next to Great-Ganny, holding her hand.”
I had to look away.
Later that morning, as the girls played with their Barbies on the carpet, I read next to my mom in bed as she sifted through the mail, mainly condolence letters from friends and strangers alike, letting her know how deeply sorry they were that she had lost her mother.
“This one is from a friend who was named after Grammee,” she said, her eyes misty. “‘I was always so proud to be named after her—I carried the name Jenna with such honor,’” my mom read from the letter.
“I feel the same way, Mom,” I said. “I love my name now more than ever.”
“It has been so hard losing Grammee,” my mother said. “Something about the permanence of it. I wasn’t expecting that to feel so painful. She had been sick for so long. And as Dad says, when your parents die, it reminds you that you’re next.”
That night I lay in bed in the room I had slept in for a dozen years, with my girls asleep in the room beside mine. The house was silent. Staring at the ceiling, I realized why being in Maine now felt so strange. Not only did I miss Ganny and Gampy, whom I’m reminded of by every piece of furniture and every crash of the waves, but it also reminded me that what my mother said is true—we’re next.
The passage of the oldest generation in our family has brought me to a new station in life. I’m no longer the carefree grandchild, running wild with my cousins. No longer are my only obligations hanging up my towels, taking my shoes off by the door, and doing my summer reading. Now I have children, a husband, a career; nieces, nephews, and godchildren. I must wake early to the sounds of my girls, cook pancakes, break up children’s arguments, call in to my office. I’m one step closer to being the daughter of ailing parents and then to aging myself.
I’m once more reminded of the passage Barbara read at Grammee’s funeral: “What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Beginning to end. How recently I was at the beginning. Now I am in the middle. Three of the people I loved most in the world have just reached the end.
Contemplating the beauty and the sorrow, the love and the loss, at last I fell asleep. Outside my window, the sea continued to churn just as it did when I was a little girl scampering over the rocks—and just as it will when, my hair gray, I gaze out the window from my own chair, grandchildren running in and out of the room.