Bye Bye.

Dedicated to my recently passed-away Grandma. And her lizard.

Let me tell you about my wonderful weird Grandmother who passed away last week.

She was beautiful and charismatic and larger than life. She was 100% Polish and chastised people quite well in her native language. The stories I heard about her before I was born were legion. About how she saw the Beatles in concert multiple times. And learned how to fly planes in her 30’s as a hobby. She was uncontainable.

Grandma had thick long hair put up like a princess, but never had a stick of makeup on that I saw. In fact, I never saw her put any effort into her appearance. And yet she was always utterly gorgeous.

Here she is with me at aged three or four. I thought of her as being so old. But she was literally my age in this picture. :/

My grandma was pure scientist. Obsessed with biology and nature, studied it in college. The last story she told me on the phone from the hospital was about her first memory. At age three. Her mother and her were looking up at the night sky. And when she asked what the stars were, her mother answered that they were angels’ faces looking down from heaven at her. She told me she remembered thinking, “How ridiculous is that.” She knew something had to have made those stars. And she wanted to find out what.

My grandmother loved animals. There was always a menagerie around her house. She had a herd of seven dachshunds that were quite scary to a small child when they ran at you en-masse, and I don’t remember ever being able to use her bathtub because there were always turtles she saved from the middle of the road living there, mostly permanently.

One day when I was about twelve, I looked in the back of her pickup truck and there was something amorphous, organic, and chunky in the back. I asked her, “What is that, grandma?” She replied, “It’s a dead owl I found! I wanted to see it’s skeleton after it disintegrated.” Then she smiled at me in a charming way. You couldn’t help but be hooked.

Grandma grew a monitor lizard named Andrew so big, he couldn’t fit in a cage anymore. So he alternated lived under the living room couch and the fridge. To see a massive four foot lizard run from one room in the house to another was, again, terrifying, but it kept you on your toes at Christmas! She paper trained Andrew to go to the bathroom under her Macaw’s cage, and exclusively fed him Alpo dog food, which isn’t exactly a normal part of a lizard’s diet? But Andrew loved it! Later, she gave him to a police officer who loved reptiles, who gifted Andrew the perfect monitor lizard cage and perfect monitor lizard diet. He died within three months. RIP mutant Alpo monitor lizard.

She was never comforting or cuddly, but when she made her mother’s Polish food she conjured magic. Her frozen pirogies filled our fridge my whole childhood. For a while, when I was around 10 or 12, I’d sneak into the laundry room and read her secret stash 50’s harlequin novels, which were mostly starring nurses, which was weird since later in her life she was a nurse herself. 

What I knew of her was beautiful and sharp. She was extremely smart, and if she focused her wrath on you, it felt like you were a butterfly being held by a pin on a mounting picture. But if she smiled at you, you felt like you were bathed in sunshine. We did not agree on politics so our conversations were not often and not long after I became an adult. I regret that, but don’t like to argue and couldn’t just “uh huh” my way through some of her beliefs.

She was sick for several months before she passed, and did not go gently into that good night. That was not her nature. She fought death like a feral animal in a cage, which I understand. She was tough. But in the end none of us are tough enough. 

All I know that it was very hard to hear someone who loomed so large in my life and was so strong, sound so afraid because she knew she was nearing her end. She had a very young voice her whole life. And I could hear the little girl in her when she was scared of the future she wouldn’t have, and it broke my heart. 

She died January 24th. The day before my daughter’s 7th birthday. Whiplash. But at least they were able to meet once, almost a year before, which I’m happy about. When we visited, my Grandmother proudly showed my daughter a lizard she’d caught in a jar in her backyard. My kid was very impressed until my Grandma held up the jar and shook it a little. “Oh no he’s dead.” My kid was in shock. But then Grandma proudly showed off the lizard corpse and started teaching about rigor mortis. My daughter was into it. A beautiful moment in a very “my Grandma” way. 

I am the keeper of our memories together now. It used to be two. Now the failsafe is gone. It’s all on me. That’s the hardest thing I am learning to deal with about death: I am responsible now. For the memories of our relationship. And where I end up at the end with them myself.

Does anything else matter except our health and the people who will be with us when we die? Those who will keep our memories for as long as they can?

Love the people who matter and spend your days so you won’t regret them. Don’t anticipate your end all the time, but maybe having it loom in the back of your mind a bit more than is comfortable. It’s a good companion to remind you not fritter away your time with those who don’t deserve to carry those memories of you with them.  They are precious. Protect them with your life.