66 years

66 Years.

In some countries that is longer than the life expectancy. Jeff's Grandma passed away last week and yesterday was the funeral. I wasn't able to go (too far away for me to travel this late in pregnancy) but he went and got home last night.

Grandma and Grandpa had been married for 66 years.

They ran away together and got married when she was 17 and he was 21. They had 5 children together, 5 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren... with number 13 due to arrive soon (that would be baby J).

She was a thoroughly modern woman, as she liked to call herself, long before anyone was modern. This self-dubbed modernity stemmed from the simple fact that she couldn't cook at all... never made anything that didn't start out life in a can. She was famous (infamous?) for messing up a green bean casserole by putting chow mein noodles on it instead of those crunchy onion rings. By the time I joined the family, it was tradition to have green bean casserole with chow mein noodles, on purpose, and she would gleefully recount the story of exactly how that had happened. However, there was far more to her than her lack of cooking ability. She was an artist, accomplished in both photography and drawing/cartooning, and a published author with at least one full length novel published (and many more manuscripts), and widely published in various magazines as diverse as children's stories and antique guides.

Speaking of my joining the family, Grandma actually proposed to me before Jeff did. The first time I met all that side of his family was for a 4th of July party at their home (even back then Grandma had a hard time getting around so all functions had to be held on her turf). She called me in for an audience, grilled me pretty good, then pronounced my name to be beautiful... except that last name is a mouthful and I should probably go ahead and change it... what did I think of the last name of Luck? When was I going to marry her doted upon grandson? I replied that while I didn't have a problem with this suggestion, I was going to go ahead and wait until he asked me. I'm not sure when she got to him, but she must have gotten the message across since he did ask me shortly thereafter.

The last time the kids and I saw Grandma was this spring at a party. She was very ill by this time and couldn't get around at all. We had the party in a small house on the property and went up to the big house to visit with her, a few at a time. I took the kids up to see her and after Jeff took them back down to the other house for dinner, I sat with her for a while. We talked about everything...and what stays in my mind is how she wouldn't let me leave. I would mention that I needed to go down and fix a plate and she never said not to go, but would simply reach out and take my hand and keep on talking. This went on for over an hour, we talked and she would just keep an eye on me...if I so much as shifted next to her, she would reach out and take my hand.

I'm so glad now that she did.

This summer she did really go downhill fast and Jeff took the time to go see her, but she was really too ill to take the kids so I didn't get to see her again.

66 years together. Grandpa is lost, his whole adult life has been centered around her, especially the last few years with her declining health--and her stubborn streak about who exactly was allowed to come and help care for her.

A lifetime together, and even though you know it is coming to an end soon... when it does, it's still a shock. Realistically, Jeff and I got married too late to have 66 years, you kind of have to elope as children to pull that one off and we were both staid and pushing 30 when we got married (and honestly Grandma, he did ask me as soon as he could and we got married in an utterly indecent rush after that!), but the life together, the devotion for each other...that we can strive for.

One thing Grandma showed me during that last visit was a poem. I could tell that it was a statement and a reply type dialogue, but what I couldn't tell until she told me, is that she wrote some stanzas and Grandpa wrote the others. They were so in tune... their life was such poetry, that their words and thoughts flowed in sync as if from the same mind.

We miss you Grandma.