I went up to spend some time with my Grandparents today. I will warn you that writing all of this down is mostly for my own benefit. I don't want to forget.
I'll say here that my Grandmother has colon cancer. She is going in for surgery on Thursday that should hopefully get rid of it. The worst part has been the waiting to see what would happen (if she could have the surgery and now how the surgery will go) and how things will turn out.
So, up to visit I went. Grandmother was in a fine mood, more chatty and upbeat than I have seen her in a while. It was good to kind of hang around and just talk to my Gram, Grandad and my Aunt Sharon. We talked about all sorts of things as my Aunt and I went through cleaning some things out. That's what we do when we visit - we clean. Sometimes we have to be very sneaky about it because Gram sits and says, "what are you doing?" "I'm going to clean that out." "I'm going to get up in the attic and put that stuff away." We all know she will not be climbing in the attic anytime soon so we just distract her with conversation (or she distracts herself with naps).
So today I was on a hunt for photo albums so I can scan the photos before they are lost/destroyed/faded/fought over/etc. I found them and was looking through them. One brought up the awesome discussion regarding dog coffins/graves.
That's just what I said. My Grandparents had a family dog, Pepper Duke, for years. Pepper Duke was everyone's favorite dog and apparently, when she died, my Grandad made her a little coffin out of 1 inch ply wood and lined with red shag carpet. Her little head was even resting on a pillow. Then the top had her name and birth and death years burned in the wood. Seriously. The best part - they took pictures...with the dog in it, which where apparently sent to my Aunt while she was away at college. Can you imagine opening a letter from home only to see pictures of your beloved family dog dead in a posh doggy coffin? Then Grandad told me he put the box in a trash bag, then another trash bag and dug a whole in the back yard deep enough to avoid run ins with tree roots. There's a little black cocker spaniel statue in the back yard marking the grave.
Then we talked about speeding tickets and the stuff Gram had to do to prepare for surgery (mostly revolving around her diet - she gets yellow, green and orange jello! yay!). When lunch time rolled around, I sneaked the photo albums out the door and Grandad and I went to lunch at Friendly's where he told me more stories.
I love listening to his stories. He's so good at telling them and he's so funny. He told me about being competitive with his older brother (they are 14 months apart) Rex - my favorite story was when they were learning to swim, my Grandad noticed that Rex was almost good enough to get to swim in the deep end so my Grandad did everything he could to swim better so Rex didn't go to the deep end before he did. He said a couple days later they both went at the same time. He also told me that when he was 12/13 years old he would go to a swimming hole and him and his friends would climb into an oil barrel - like a big huge oil thing and just kind of hang out. Then my Grandma found out when she was like 90 and totally scolded my Grandad. She said, "Gordon, you should know better!" and all he could say was, "Mother, I'm 68 years old." I just love the idea of that conversation.
Grandad told me more about meeting my Grandmother. Gram is a twin and they were both really little so they were held back before starting school. That put my Grandmother and my Grandad in the same grade even though Gram is three years older. They met in 10th grade when my Grandad's family moved to the farm and he switched to her school. He used to sit behind her in class and he made a checker board on a blank slate and they played checkers throughout the school day. He told me he remembered seeing her when he was about 13. I said, "and you just thought 'hey, she's cute'" and he said, pretty much. According to my Grandmother, their first date was to a "wiener roast" in 10th grade. He said they used to go ice skating and roller skating and play cards with each other's families.
He also told me about jobs he had. He worked in a shoe store for a little bit and at a lumber yard with my Uncle Eddie (my Gram's brother) after he was in the Navy and after he married my Grandmother. He also dug graves. That's right. Dug. Graves. for dead people. He said it was nice because he never had to see the dead people or the funerals, just dug the holes and that he actually only dug about four graves. He got to spend the whole day outside and spent his time taking care of the grounds, but his boss never paid him on payday. Gram said every time they wanted to go on a date, Grandad had to go find his boss and ask for money...even almost a year after he finished working for the guy! Grandad said it was a small town and the guy was kind of a loner and that they both just kept track of how much money was owed. There's no way something like that would work now.
Finally, he told me a story about me when I was little. My mom was sick when I was little so I spent a lot of time at my grandparents. Really I probably spent half of my weekends at their house clear through middle school...I started going less around 7th grade, but even then I went and stayed the weekend quite often. Anyway, my crib was down the hall from my grandparents room. I was a little younger than 2 years and I learned to climb out of my crib. I came walking down the hall crying for my Grandad. Gram tried to get me to not wake up Grandad (Grandad sleeps till nine - we don't wake him up earlier than that) and to walk to her side. Their previous experience with Gordy as a child waking up in the morning was that he wanted breakfast and would stop at the door asking for breakfast till Gram got up and made him breakfast. So Grandad thought he would have to get up with me. But I just climbed up on his side of the bed, cuddled in and settled myself back to sleep. He said he thought, "Now this is my kind of kid." And really we've always been like that. I'm his girl, always will be. There are a lot of stories to illustrate that, but those will have to be saved for later.
Okay, well, this was a really long post, but like I said, I had to get this stuff down so I can find it later when I want it. For anyone who read all of this, congrats, hope it was interesting to you. I had such a fun time just being with my Grandad and getting to visit with my Gram and Aunt Sharon. It was comforting to see my Gram in such good spirits. She was laughing and joking around (which hasn't been the norm in the last few years), she didn't really get out of bed, but she also stayed awake the entire time I was there (which is also really good). She is ready to just go and get things taken care of, which is a good outlook. It really just was a good day and I'm glad I took the time to go and spend the day with them, it was worth missing work or really whatever else I could have done today. I'm so grateful I could spend this time with them.
That would be my Grandad, Grandmother and her twin sister, Marion, and my uncle Paul (Grandad's brother). First of all...look how tiny they were (the twins)! No one in that family really got any tall genes, but since they were twins, they were always tiny - they even went to school later because of their size and that's how my Grandmother and Grandad ended up in the same class where they would meet when they were 18 and 15 years old. 