Thoughts.

My grandma was a rocket scientist (Nurse). She got a PHD, when women didn't get that sort of degree. She taught at a University, when Universities didn't get in trouble for paying women less than men. She had a family. Her husband died of cancer in his sixties. Then, later in life, she was diagnosed with a terminal illness, that caused her body to shut down.

Enter Jordan.

It never occurred to me, until I heard my sister say something important, that my perception of my grandmother was largely based on my limited experience with a suffering woman, frustrated at her inability to do things for herself.

I mopped the floor. Grandma sat in her wheelchair looking on. I finished the job, emptied the water bucket, and put the mop away. Grandma called me to her side to say, "Now get a towel and dry the floor by hand."

I'd never cleaned the floor that way, and, I was eager to go out and play--so, I didn't mind and sneaked away. Nothing more was said.

I've always felt regret when I remember dashing off, without regard for her request.

Grandma was particular about the way things should be done.

The last time I saw her, I was in Utah with my family. I was 12 or so. My aunts and uncles gathered around her to speak about the future. She cautiously lifted her head to interject: I am donating my brain to science, so that they can cure it.

She repeated herself three times before the discussion ended.

Years earlier I dug around the guest room in my grandmas little house. I had it in me to find something of her husband's, who I never knew, to take with me. I found a little alarm clock, which I was sure must have been his. I brought it to the kitchen, where she sat in her wheelchair. I was shy. I held the clock out and looked down, evading eye contact, hoping she'd read my mind.

"That's my alarm clock, I used to take it with me on trips. You wind it up like this--"

"Oh." I was disappointed it wasn't his and ashamed I had wished it had been--like, I knew then, that maybe I should have combed grandma's home for something by which I would remember her.

"Why don't you keep it?"

"OK. Thank you, Grandma."

I did.

And now I have it.

It's important to me to have something of her with me, as I live the life she worked for. As I clutch the clock in the palm of my hand (There's something peculiar about an object that naturally nests in the palm of your hand), and remember her, I imagine how connected we are. She said once to my mother, "I'll see you and your girls." She was referring to life after death.

I needed this time. The time, they don't prepare you for--life between college and marriage--to understand her.

This isn't the first time I've felt it. And, so I begin to realize, that family really must be more important than any of us comprehend.