Maude

My grandmother…Maude Brooks Willis…was born on the fourth of July in 1888. She died on the nineteenth of July in 1983. In between those two dates she lived a life filled with all of the bittersweet ups and downs that all of us walking the path from the birth to the light leading to eternity with our eyes and hearts open should and will experience.

My grandmother…who was funny, feisty, active (even tending to a large vegetable garden in her yard every day), and unflappable into her nineties…gave birth to ten children over the course of twenty-eight years (her youngest son, the ninth of those ten children, was my father), a few of whom (including a daughter who died at age 15 a month of so before my father was born) I hadn’t known about until the start of a very recent effort to collect family information into one collection. That effort has brought her into the forefront of my thoughts…fondly, indelibly…lately.

My grandmother lived in a grand old house in a very tiny town just outside of Philadelphia. I last saw her in 1978 having taking my vacation time (I was toiling in the administrative bowels of a major cosmetics company in Hollywood…its initials, MF, having more than one meaning for those of us working there… at the time) flown across the country on the occasion of her 90th birthday (every year the 4th of July parade in town stopped in front of her house so that the marching band could serenade her with an affectionate rendition of “Happy Birthday”.)

In quiet times, I would sit at her kitchen table while she puttered about…she seemed to have an endless supply of energy…and listen with fascination as she talked about her life…her family…her world. She never dwelled on anger or regret…life was too short to fret overmuch about that which could not be changed…but rather with an appreciation of all of the wonders (both amazing and mundane) that had filled her long life. She was filled with homespun wisdom, gently acerbic humor, abounding love, and, if you listened in the right way, echoes of the melancholy that is part and parcel of any life fully lived.

Every once in a while she would make a cogent point by putting her hand over mine, looking me straight in the eye, and saying “Buddy, you should always remember…” (My father’s nickname is Bud and I, by extension, was “Buddy”…but it was an appellation used only by her and though I’ve never been big on nicknames…though I accumulated a few over the years just the same…I never minded being “Buddy” to her.)

My grandmother (I’m positive she wouldn’t mind me putting it this way) was a grand old gal.