At first I thought I didn't particularly want to say anything about it. Then I thought I couldn't really say anything at all until I had at least acknowledged this fairly major life event. Then I decided that was completely neurotic. Then I decided to write something about it here anyway.

We weren't especially close, and even less so the past few years. Now we never will be it's really my fault how many times did she invite me out to the lake and I always said I had to work (GODDAMN I'm trying to turn even this into an I hate my work-every-single-weekend job rant) she was part of my childhood and that counts for something and now she's dead.

(That right there is an approximation of my brain the last week.)

Everyone is talking about dominoes. Gramma loved the dominoes. I'm just going to come out and say it: I hated dominoes. I'd play whenever it was offered, because it was so often the only game in town. Don't get me wrong. I loved the atmosphere, the talking and hanging out with family aspect of it, but seriously, there is no more boring, pointless game. Give me Cribbage. Give me Crazy Eights. Give me Yahtzee, Go Fish, or Hearts. For the love of god, give me Bridge. There were so many good Gramma games. Why did it always have to be those damn dominoes?

I remember strawberry jam, made from strawberries I had helped pick. I remember cocktail hour, on the boat. (A pontoon boat, in the summer, is in fact the natural habitat of ice-cold cream soda. Drinking cream soda without your feet dangling in Lake Beulah is but a sad approximation.) I remember her perfect little house.

Seriously. You should have seen this house. The kitchen alone would blow your mind. Everything so meticulously arranged in a cupboard that it seemed as if it must have been designed for that exact purpose. (Clearly, the lids go in this drawer, because if you put them over there, there would have been an extra inch of wasted space.) The cupboards were all painted white metal, and literally covered with magnets. No, you don't understand. Hundreds of magnets.

The rest of the house followed similar principles, but since an entire house of metal surfaces would have been weird, the overlying motif was wood and glass. It was impossible to turn your head three inches without seeing an unusual bottle filled with sand or beads, or one of my Grampa's wood carvings. When she ran out of space on the tables and shelves and windowsills, Grandma started hanging trinkets from the ceiling.

That makes her sound a little crazy, but it wasn't like that. It was all very tastefully done, and the finished house was a work of art. Sarah told me that one of my cousins went through the house and took photos of it all.

So, there was a funeral. Our "family pastor" officiated. He's a Camp guy, and thus a friend of the family basically forever. He said some very nice things about Gramma, and also Grampa, and growing up at Camp with both of them. He also said quite a bit about God. (I think Rijid was more offended by this than anyone else. He grew up the son of a part-time pastor, and I think he finds it liberating that my family is so completely not about that. What he doesn't get is that we're athiests, not anti-Christians. We recognise that the God stuff is important to a lot of people, and we're not going to throw a fit if someone else thinks they're getting comfort from it. But I digress.) The service was overall very touching. Sarah said some very nice things about dominoes.

Mom's family were planning on going through Gramma's house the next day, but since I had to work, Mom took me there right after the funeral to pick out a few mementos.

I honestly had no idea what to pick. The house in its entirety was so perfect. Moving any of it, not to mention splitting up certain table arrangements, seemed like a desecration. How could anyone take just one bottle of beads, or one magnet?

I saw a glass brontosaurus, and my initial reaction was "What? What is this? Oh, WOW." and I decided that was the closest approximation to any fisrt reaction of the house as a whole, so I asked my mom to save it for me. Then I saw the wooden animals. My grandpa was an artist. He did a lot of painting, a LOT of jewelry, and a lot of small carvings. The animals were all about 9-10 inches high, and perfectly detailed.

I knew that my mom and my uncles had a greater claim to just about everything, especially the stuff Grandpa made, and I felt bad about voicing a preference for anything, since I didn't know what they would want. I told my mom I'd like one of the animals, but it honestly did not matter which one. Let everyone else pick their favorite, and I'd take whatever was left.

.

I ended up with the fish. If I were going to pick one, it probably would have been that one. It's really pretty amazing. It has a single nail to help support it, but it looks like it just balances on the lower fins. Know what's even more cool? It's a bluegill. Check out the shape of the fins, yo. Such attention to detail. Now I like it even more.)

Thursday, I met my parents at Gramma's house again. Everyone had taken something personal, but there was still a lot left. I took a few lamps, a few tables, a blender. (My fish looked awesome, sitting by itself on a small wooden endtable, but already, the kipple has started to take over. That's just how I roll.) I also took a few random magnets, and one glass bottle.

Sarah had taken all the jewelry that no one else wanted, and today I'm going to drive over to her place to look at that. Gramma had a LOT of jewelry. She could, and usually did, wear four or five different pieces every day. Dominoes and jewelry are the ways I'll remember her most.

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