My grandmother and mother

My grandmother passed away on July 20th, just one week shy of her 91st birthday.  She had been having a very hard time these past few years so it was a blessing.  I never lived near my grandmother and didn’t know her as well as I would have liked.  But I remember always being very excited to visit her.  We’d pull into the drive way and she would be at the door waiting to give a hug so big and strong that you wondered if she would let go of you in time to catch your breath.  She’d accompany that hug with great slaps on the back, as if she was trying to help a choking victim.  No, she wasn’t beating me up 🙂 … it was a hug that told you that she loved you intensely.

Grammy always wore red glasses, and she liked to poke her finger into your arm and say, with a giggle, “Am I boring you?”  I never really got it until I was older that she meant ‘bore’, as in ‘to drill a hole’.  That was Grammy’s style of joke.

I remember when we took her to see a movie.  It must have been her first movie in the theater because when it ended she said, “Is this intermission?”

And I’ll never forget the time she called me into the kitchen to show me the special way she cracked and peeled hard boiled eggs.  She pulled me close as if to whisper a secret.  Then she cracked the egg on my forehead and put in my hands so I could peel it for her.

In 2011, I brought my family up to visit her for mother’s day.  She was having a really good day.  She even recognized her 2 great-grandchildren from the pictures I’d sent her!

She taught my sister to roller skate.  She let me slide down the carpeted stairs, over and over again.  She cut my orange into lots of little squares so my little hands could hold them more easily.  She wrote beautiful poetry.  She always had candy in her house, but she served me vegetables first!

These are the things I’d like to remember!

Ruth Mae Pelletier

born July 27, 1921 – died July 20, 2012

5 children, 10 grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren