Dia de los Muertos

 
I haven't really lost anyone. There was my grandmother. She passed a couple of years ago. She was in her 80s and still full of life when she died. Or at least that's how I remember her.

We were close; she helped raise me as grandmas do. It is from her phone I dialed 976 numbers when I visited after work. We worked at the same retreat center. It was a short walk from her senior housing apartment complex to the center. I was the dishwasher, and she was the cook.

She was the one that got me the job that eventually led to me borrowing or stealing a Total Recall VHS tape. I got to watch it just once before my dad took it from me. I was in the eighth grade and not allowed to watch R movies, especially ones that showed boobs. He threatened to throw it away. He didn't. I found it in his underwear drawer next to the condoms.

My grandma and I grew distant when I moved to San Francisco. We weren't the best conversationalists over the phone, and I rarely returned to Minnesota. She visited California twice. We both still loved each other dearly. It just happened to be the quiet and rarely spoken kind.

The funeral was the first time the entire (or almost entire) family came together. It was good to see everyone and awkward. Besides blood and blue collars, there isn't and wasn't too much that holds or held us all together except empty promises to call. As in life, it was grandma that connected us. Such are mothers, regardless of gender.

I miss her. I miss her stories most of all: the ones about dancing in spite of Depression, how I looked like my grandfather who died when I was three, her unquestioning faith in God. She was life-blood to history.

It is because of her I tell stories. I want to keep my history alive.

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