I’m actually posting this to the blog a couple of months late, since it’s a major event that happened during the four-month hiatus, but am dating it appropriate to when I should have mentioned it: on 11 May 2009, just before noon, the kids’ Great-Grandma Drake passed away. She was 85 years old—just a few months younger than her own mother was—and her health had been failing, for a while. After multiple hospital and rehab stays, she passed away at home, in the apartment where she had lived for over 35 years (twenty-something of them with the kids’ Great-Granddad, who passed away in 1995).
Our family rented a minivan and were heading out to New Jersey, in hopes of seeing her one last time. Unfortunately—or fortunately, judging by my father’s description of how she looked—that was not to be: we got the call as the kids and I were sitting in the van, waiting for Anna to lock the front door to the house. Pop (my father) was pretty broken up about it, but the rest of the week—though hectic—was actually quite nice. Great-Grandma was buried with Great-Granddad, behind the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains, where my parents (and, occasionally, grandparents) attended. The church’s new pastor, Kathleen; my parents; and I all spoke, at the funeral.
It’s funny…. I do miss my grandmother—there have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to call her, to tell her something funny the kids are doing, and then remember I can’t—but it’s the same peace I had when my grandfathers died, in 1995 and 1997. I know where they are, I have a basic idea of what they’re doing, and I know it’s possible for us to be together again. She was a wonderful woman in life, and I expect she’s still wonderful in death. We miss you, Great-Grandma, and we love you more than we could ever say.
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