spend more time with my grandmother

My paternal grandmother passed away on May 6th in Seattle. I hadn’t seen her in two years…

my Grandma’s 92nd Birthday. I went over to hang out with her and we visited, wathched tv and ate cake.

She’s got dementia. Her memory is going. She keeps waking up at night, packing her stuff because “she’s not home” (but she’s in the house she shared with my grandfather for their 43 years of marriage…). I fear one day she will forget me, and I want to make as many memories as I can before “one day” becomes “should have”.

We hosted a surprise birthday party for my grandmother this year – under the reality, do it while you can. We had just suffered a great loss in our family and I didn’t want to say, would have, could have, should have. We catered lunch for the Senior Center she attends, set up photos and pictures, sang happy birthday, and served dinner for 50. Surprise…for someone who doesn’t like surprises, she surely appreciated love in action. As for the family – I gave up on everyone doing it the same way, everyone contributing, everyone being supportive. We just did it. Happy Birthday Bigmama!

Today I had lunch at her place and we talked about cooking and stuff, and looked at ancient recipe books. It was fun :)
And on saturday I’m gonna go visit my other grandma with my dad.
I have to keep in mind that I’m probably gonna move away this summer.. even more reasons to spend time with them.

my family stopped by for a short visit. It was nice, my mom and my aunt were there too. I also stopped by last weekend. Now if I can just do it every week and not let life get in the way!

we had a family dinner she enjoyed holding my cousins twins. :)

I went and spent a few hours with her. It was so fun to see how happy bringing my baby daughter over makes her. I planned on going this week to, but it looks like it might have to be next week since this week is basicly over and I don’t think I will get a chance to go. I am going to try to visit with her at least once a week.

She lives less then twenty minutes away from me and I can’t even remember the last time I went to visit her. She did come and see me after I had my baby about a month ago but it is definatly time for me to go see her. Hopefully I get to tomorrow.

The other day we were making german pasta, well she showed me how to do it for the first time. And the dough was so heavy that after two stirs, my arms started hurting. She just said “oh, let me do it.” and stirred it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. That’s what 70 years of practise will do to you! ahah (yes she started when she was 10).
She said she’d arm wrestle me later, but then we forgot. I’m kinda scared too lol.

She also told me this joke:

a guy gets on a train and looks for a seat. Everything is crowded, but there is one compartment where theres only one woman sitting .
he sits down, and failing to notice that it’s a non smoking department, he starts to stuff tobacco in his pipe
the woman looks at him, takes the pipe from his hands and throws it out the window
he says What the hell are you doing!
and she replies, “This is a non smoking compartment.”
“But I was only stuffing it!”
“well stuffing is halfway to smoking, and you cant smoke in here.”
after a while the girl takes out a lunch box
she opens it, and takes out a sandwich. Then the guy rips it from her hands and throws it out the window
she says “What the fuck, I was gonna eat that!”
and he says “well eating is halfway to shitting, and you certainly won’t shit in here.”