Notes on a Plane (2003 version)

It was very late October, 2003. I lived in Massachusetts... far, far away from family, save my Aunt/Sister Pat. My grandmother was in a nursing home in Mississippi and not the sharpest, mentally. I had just visited some months earlier, and was shocked to see her like that for the first time. Now it was her physical health that was faltering. "Be prepared", came the phone calls at work.

My Grandmother was the biggest influence in my life. Born and raised in the South to parents of little means, she continually yearned to a better station in life, and dragged everyone along. Which meant dragging a husband and two kids (one my dad) 1200 miles north to the Rust Belt and jobs. Then dragging her sisters and brothers and associated families, also. It really was for the best. Or my little egg would have wound up down a sewer somewhere.

The call came while I was getting ready for work. It's time to catch a plane and head South again. Riding in that plane, I decided I would speak her eulogy. And with the help of some cocktails at 20,000ft, I wrote the best eulogy ever written. It put my grandmother in her true light, vices and all. The flight attendants must have thought I was bipolar, alternating from tears to chuckles as I was.

Here, copied from the original I found a little while ago, is what I wrote on that bittersweet flight:

We've all come here today to pay our respects to a remarkable lady. O*** was a woman who didn't take kindly to getting older. I've always called her O***, because she didn't care for the word "Grandmother" early on. I spent much time with a pair of tweezers, pulling gray hairs while she put on her make-up. But she did get older, and with a great deal of grace and charm. She's what I imagined Scarlett O'Hara would have become, with a little Endora and a smidgen of Mrs. Cleaver.

She tought me how to shop, how to sew, and how to curse at ignorant drivers. She was the best at creating dramatic outfits for not much money. She could charm any sales clerk or reduce one to tears just as easily. She called me handsome when I was a fat 12-year old. She always kept the world's worst candy, circus peanuts, until finally getting something better, those individual Mounds bars, which probably helped me become a fat 12-year old. She probably could have given Shirley Muldowney a run for her money, but always got us safely to Panama City and back.

She kept the makers of Vienna sausages, buttermilk, and Sanka afloat long past their usefulness, but I actually saw her try escargot and like it (until I told her what it was). She had a knack for banana pudding, buscuits, and brandy balls, but I never saw a recipe. Red was her favorite color, and she wore it better than anyone I've ever known. It sure did match her personality.

She was an icon, our Matriarch, and no one could ask for a better Grandmother.

[When I finished, there were as many smiles as there were tears. And that's how she would have liked it.]

[And that's one reason why the Holidays aren't as Happy as they used to be. And why I haven't posted in a while. But I'm back, yall. (God, that sounds so Brittney)]