My Grandma was an Unproclaimed Feminist

A Regular Gloria Steinem

I have a cassette tape of an interview with my grandmother from 2006.  We’re sitting on the deck that stretched out from her back door, birds are singing in the background, quite a lovely soundtrack, and at various points throughout the audio, the interview is interrupted by her continual interest in what the neighbors were doing.  Anyone who knew her, well or not, is nodding and smiling, well aware of her habitual neighbor watching.  She’d call it “curiosity.”

Partway through the tape, I ask her about when she first dated my grandfather.  He wasn’t her first boyfriend, she disclosed, I remember it being something I was slightly surprised to hear her admit; if only due to clichés (all mothers and fathers lie about the other being their first, right?)  And then I asked if she knew the moment they fell in love.

“I was really surprised he was even interested in me.  But I just kept acting myself and he seemed to like who I was.  I would just voice my opinion, ya know, not really care if that was okay or not.”

Knowing my grandmother as well as I did, I can tell you she lived her entire life this way.  It wasn’t something done out of spite (well, at times maybe) or something she acquired with age, the way we enjoy certain tastes with time and maturity.  She was honest.  She was open.  She wasn’t afraid to speak what was on her mind and I would venture to say, to stand up for what she believed in.

She embodied this ability to make judgments and profess thoughts, to analyze situations without noticing she had, doing so quickly and with confidence.  Now, this can be both a blessing and a curse, as it also comes with a stubbornness that’s hard to shake, and at times conclusions that were not always drawn in the best interest of anyone.  But she was  a person who practically lived the life of an orphan as a child, losing her father at seven to complications from the flu, and then having a mother who was forced to go to work while raising two kids, and because of this, my grandmother had to learn quickly to stick up for herself.  She had to learn to have a voice.

One of the things I’ve come to admire and appreciate about my grandma’s “voice,” is the way in which she used it.  I can tell you she was not a wealthy woman, but she gave and gave to charities and nonprofits until the weeks before her death.  She wanted to be a nurse to take care of others.  She took me in to make sure I was given a healthy home to mature in.  She often requested Former President Bush be “castrated.”  (She was looking out for all of our best interest.)  She truly wanted to help people and was not afraid to speak or act on this desire.

If I ever would have asked her outright if she were a feminist, she probably would have said no.  Or maybe.  It wouldn’t have been a profound proclamation and was never something she would volunteer herself.  Domestic engineer? Yes, she told you upfront right away.  Pervert? If you probed her, she would have likely agreed with a laugh.  But as I listen to this tape and hear her speak about learning to drive a car or running a grocery store, and then when I reflect on all I know of the time she was growing up and raising a family, I can only confirm that my grandmother truly believed she had every right to do everything my grandfather did, and took it one very important step further, she did those things.

Shortly after the election of President Obama, I asked her if she ever thought we would have a female president:

“I sure as hell hope so!” she professed, leaning forward in her recliner, hands on the armrest as if she were going to lunge forward, emphatic, dramatic, nearly spilling over.  Though I never said this while she was alive, I’d like to say it now: I am so proud of you.

The Many Manifestations of Grief

The Angel of Grief (Rome, Italy)

Each day my grieving takes a different shape.  There’s no evident progression or regression.  I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I don’t think that’s my decision to make, or anyone’s, really.

Each day my grieving takes a different shape and at times it comes in the form of fond remembrance.  I can picture my grandma in her jazziest purple pantsuit with a matching necklace and clip-on earring set, spritzing herself in Chanel, wrapping her wooden rosary around her wrist and fingers, and nearly waltzing to the garage, off to a birthday party or graduation for one of her grandkids.  How proud I always was to walk her in to a room full of people; she was always the guest of honor, even when the celebration was for someone else.

Other days my grief takes the shape of pure and empty disbelief.  She’s gone?  It doesn’t seem possible, I can’t comprehend it.  The complexity of time and my place within it feels simply and literally gargantuan.  How is it not but three months ago I was with her?  I was with her wit, her liveliness, her body sitting across from mine, and now I have only the capacity of my own mind to connect with her?  Can I handle that?  Will I succeed?  And if I don’t, will I forever hate myself for not writing down more memories, taking more pictures, tracing each and every moment from every silence to every blink?  How did she manage this immensity of confusion and disorientation three major times over during her lifetime?  Her strength becomes even more apparent in these moments.

And the worst days of all are those in which nothing feels different.  When my life feels as it did when she was with me.

It’s horrific.

The 500 miles that separated us was only bridged by phone for most of the three years I lived in Minnesota.  And over those months by phone, there would be times when we might go a few days between our talks.  It’s easy to get lost in the material of the mundane.  It’s easy when I wake and work and stay going to not think of her until my head hits the pillow. And it’s the saddest shape my grief can take. It’s the hardest to reconcile when it feels as it did when I still knew she was on Earth.  Because I always want to feel the depth of losing her.  A lot exists in that abyss that can’t be summed up in one feeling or another, but when I don’t have any emotion clinging to it, that feels like a tragedy.

I then know days of wanting to drive the eight hours back to St. Louis, back to throw my body on her grave, and weep.  On those days, I find myself soaked in some sort of logic that the proximity to what remains of her body, what was once the sanctuary of her being, will reconnect us in a way that I cannot achieve through meditation or thought.  While I won’t follow through on the impulse or the whim to drive down in the middle of the week, I do look forward to that first reunion with her grave site and the shape my grief will be able to take at that moment, for which I cannot now predict.

On one single occasion sitting alone at work, I felt a sensation across my fingertips that reminded me of touching her corpse.  The wax, molded, intentional, no fluidity, no warmth.  No life.  The reinvented sensation felt almost out-of-body.  Kissing her forehead at her wake…that wasn’t me touching that shell of her, was it?  Because who am I without her in my life?

And other days, I am acting out how it felt during those moments with her at death.  The bitter, intoxicating smell of her skin.  I couldn’t help inhaling.  If I knew her in life, I wanted to be sure to know her in death.  The grin I swore I saw her give when I first arrived back home, kneeling by her bed and grabbing for her hand.  That grin, even if only in my imagination.

There are the ever so fortunate days when I feel her with me.  At home, at work, in the car.  And now as I write this, she has appeared in my heart.  What she thought those final days, I will never know, but may always speculate.  So much of her mind made my own.  And as I my grief grows and sometimes hides, shameful, of what it won’t tell me, I willfully collect all of these manifestations.  They each have their own point to make and each gravitate toward a different part of my relationship with my grandma.

At last, I close in on a thought I carry with me always.  I witnessed her last breath and I wear that like a badge of honor.

Tonight, I think of you, Leona.

wonderment.

Since mid-October, I’ve spent the last few months reflecting and gathering.  It’s been a trial of the mind, attempting to scrounge up every memory, all the moments and morsels, the slightest scintilla of laughter or happiness or anger or anything, so that I can wrap them up and tuck them away somewhere they can’t be forgotten or harmed, somewhere safe and forever.  I dig back to a time before I moved away, back to the concrete walls of her basement (what I knew as my high school bedroom), and back before all that, even, when I was just that little girl with ants in her britches who lived across the street.

And all at once, I start to worry.  I don’t feel I’m digging up enough.  There has to be more.  I’m forgetting, I’m already forgetting.

I become overwhelmed.  I’m sunken and concerned.  How can this person who embodies so much of who I am, to whom I accredit as my protector, have already faded?

It was a devastating thought to wallow in, but before completely losing faith in myself, I came to a conclusion–it’s impossible.  I will never know every moment, every laugh, recall every talk we shared laying side-by-side in her twin beds.  But something about these times in our lives makes us want to remember each of these moments.

I realized, though, I will always retain what she’s taught me.  I can recall the attributes and ideals I hope to someday mimic, and I will never lose sight of what she meant to me.  And what I have prepared are these lessons and what I’ve melded together is something of a pact with myself.  The things I too want to be to someone, someday, as Leona was to me.

1. Dependable.  She was the voice on the other end of the phone every time I picked up to call.  She was an assured laugh when I needed it, a “bless your pea-pickin’ heart” when I skinned my knee.  Her dependability stretched across many facets of my life and wide breadths of my emotions.   The past decade Leona became my foundation.  She enabled and encouraged me to go and to do.  If ever there was a time I was in need, a vacuum for my college dorm, or maybe something out of the ‘magical bag of everything you’ll ever need’ which she kept by her living room recliner, whatever the need, Leona was by my side.  (I’m convinced the said black organizer is also housing my future wedding dress, all tucked up and folded and shoved in to one of the side pockets.)  And if ever there were a woman to teach you that bread ties make great ornament hooks and leftover gravy tastes so good when swiped up with a piece of sandwich bread, it was Leona.
2. Humor.  Call it what you want, I find it impressive that this 93-year-old woman died knowing what the caption “Leona Henry tosses a salad,” could mean.  Her humor, though often crude, was never in dearth.  When my fiancée and I drove down to St. Louis on January 2, we weren’t sure who to expect to see in the hospital.  I warned him that Leona had lost nearly 60 pounds; she was weak and may not be up for jokes.  But, of course, I was wrong.  Shortly after arriving to the hospital, a voice from the other side of the curtain was beckoning for help cutting up her food.  As a kind gesture, my fiancee agree to pop over and help, and for me to stay bedside my grandmother.  While he was hidden behind the curtain so graciously helping the neighbor lady, we overheard her introduce herself to him as Mrs. Pertle.  With that, grandma leaned over and whispered to me, “Did I just hear her say her name is Fertile Myrtle?  You better watch out for her, she might take your fiancée,” which she ended up sharing with him, only to make him blush and laugh.  That set the pace for the day, what would become our very beautiful, cherished goodbye.
3. Resilience.  There is one thing that Leona irrefutably possessed, and that was her resilience.  No one can deny her of this.  She lost her father at the age of 7, her second-born when she was 45, and lived the last two decades without her husband.  Anyone who visited with her in her final weeks can attest to this woman’s strength and dignity until her final breath with us here on Earth.  In moments of strife when my chest becomes tight, I close my eyes, as she often did, and try to pull together all of the strength in my being.  She has become an incredible example of how to handle the unexpected and wild roads of life.  Leona was never afraid to fight for what she believed in.  She never failed to keep going; she tried so hard not to let tribulations become obstacles in her life.  She felt fortunate for all that was given to her and shared this through generosity and good faith.

I’ll close my eyes tonight perhaps not with the picturesque memory of the two of us watching GSN in her living room.  I won’t quite be able to masterfully recreate the last few sentences we shared in room 332 at Anderson Hospital.  Tonight I will go to bed thankful and happy, thinking of Leona, in her favorite muumuu (the one with the watermelon slice and the ants scattered all about the skirt).  Leona, the most reliable, witty, and resilient woman I will ever know.  Tonight, let us all reflect on the lessons she has taught us.