on grandparents.

When I created The Grandparent Album, the idea was simple. Similar to how I created The Annual Heirloom Album but paired down. Not as extensive. But still, helpful. Projects such as these, I find that I do them myself, already in my Organized Maura fashion, but as I move through it, the efficiencies that could have helped me along the way become clear through the INefficiencies that arise.

The more people involved in contributing, the more administrative work is involved, this we know. So when gathering photos from the extended family, one is already aware that time and upkeep are willingly being added to one’s plate.

But by inserting some preparational steps, I found a way to not do everything. Something I’ve heard called delegating tasks. Google Drive and google docs. proved essential. I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again: we have used these digital organizational systems to tremendous effect in our work worlds. Just imagine what they could do for our personal life.

(I know many of you already do this. I know I’m not the first one to put these software systems to work for me in my home life. But I also know that sometimes we get so wrapped up in treading water that we don’t give ourselves time to grab a floatie, pause to catch our breath, and re-evaluate how we’re moving through the water. Whilst paused, maybe we discover that if we tweak our methods, or institute methods and systems in the first place, we wouldn’t need to tread.)

(What’s a blog post without a thoroughly played out metaphor in parens?)

As I gathered the photos and created the album, I had the thought that, man, were we really going to be organized for her funeral. But of course at the time, I dared not mention that out-loud. I didn’t want to think about her dying. And she’d endured so much at that point there was a sense that she’d be around for many more years. I really believed that.

The making of the album, even with my systems at work, was still a large project to tackle. But this we know. However, the thing about these family centric projects is that they just bring nostalgia and memories and big feelings, as we call them in our household, to the surface. Cousins and aunts and uncles dragged photos into that Google Drive folder that just brought me back to a time and place when it was all so much simpler. When we were kids catching fireflies and playing flashlight tag. I wrote the opening letter teary eyed, I arranged pages of those I love but can no longer hug - wait for it - teary eyed.

Turns out that I got as much out of the journey as I got out of the destination.

But the destination was a special moment, too. I finished the album in time for her late March birthday, and I brought my little nuclear family to Cleveland to deliver it in person. (Because nothing says spring break like Cleveland in March.) It was the first time I’d stepped foot in her nursing home since before the pandemic. It was the first time I’d seen her in person since the pandemic. The cousin who still lives in Cleveland proper - he and his family met us there. He was/is a ‘younger cousin’. Meaning I am at least a decade older than him. I used to spend my spring breaks at his childhood home, holding him and playing with him (I guess Spring Break, The Cleveland Edition is not such a new thing for me.) He was my baby. And now I was meeting his baby. I hugging my grandma and holding my cousin’s baby…

And flipping through the album with them.

I just didn’t think it’d be the last time I’d ever see her. I really didn’t. But it was. We awoke on December 14th to news that she was unresponsive. I packed my bags, shuffled the schedule, made sure all pertinent details were related to my husband re my daughter’s needs, ready to leave first thing the next morning. But my grandma passed away at 2:00a.m. on the morning of December 15th.

Her children were with her that last day. I didn’t get to say goodbye. And the little girl in me is sad about that. But the grown up in me is so, so, so, so grateful that I made the trip in March. That that visit is my last memory of her.

I never met my grandfather, my dad’s dad, my grandma’s husband. He died unexpectedly of an aortic aneurism at the age of 48. He’d had a mild heart attack the year prior but we think that had nothing to do with the aneurism. His death was a complete shock. My grandma became a widow at the age of 46. She would live for 48 more years.

We were never wildly close, her and I, but I loved her terribly. My grandma lit up up the room with her smile and charm. She made friends with whomever she came in contact with, remembering names and details that she’d ask follow up questions  about the next time she ran into you. She knew how to make you feel special. Because she listened, and she cared.

She was one of the world’s great beauties - I was convinced as a little girl. Beautiful at every stage of her life, in fact, with style and good taste too. (This Libra granddaughter noticed it all.)

And, at every stage of her life, circumstances handed her hardships. She learned far too young that life is not fair.

I asked her - maybe ten years ago? - how she dealt with all that. We never talked in specifics; there are so many questions that were never asked or answered. But when I asked that very vague, very innocuous question - that carried so much weight between the lines - she thought quietly for a moment then said, “Well, Maura, I always looked for the reasons the smile.”

It’s so simple. But it’s also a choice. A hard choice sometimes. A choice she just continued to make, come what may. And I’ve leaned on that choice, and I try to choose it, too, when darkness comes.

Words of advice from a great beauty who’s now at peace. It’s so wonderful and so heartbreaking to love people so much, isn’t it? 

Anyway, guess what was easy-peasy lemon squeezey as we prepped for her funeral? Gathering photos. We’d already done the work. (Guess what can often be an overwhelming task when planning a funeral, based on prior experience? Gathering photos.)

The Grandparent Album is a free class because I just can’t recommend making this album enough. Many members of my family ended up buying copies, too. Our story and our grandma lives on for our children. The night before she died, I pulled it out at storytime; it was the book I read to my daughter that night, hours before Peggy Malloy left this world.