Memories of Hazel, My Grandmother

We are all born of a woman. And the woman who gave birth to us was also born of a woman. My mother's mother name was Hazel, grandma Hazel to me and my siblings. She was matronly and kindly. She baked cookies. She mussed my hair and called me 'Butch.'

Like many women of her generation who raised families during the depression years of the 1930s, she had it rough. As a young woman before she married, she was a telegraph operator. In another time, she could have been a successful career woman.

Like many families in the Great Depression, she and her family were poor and when her husband was laid off, they got poorer.

But they raised their own food, grandma made every one's clothes and she stayed home while her husband looked for work. Like many people, he got a job in the military buildup to the Second World War, working in a factory that made missiles.

When her husband died when I was two years old, grandma was devastated. I remember mom and dad worrying about her. She never remarried. We visited her at least once a month when we were little. Then we moved away.

In the later years of her life, we moved again to be closer to her. I remember visiting her with mom and eating pie at her favorite restaurant. She liked pie.

I remember her telling me how important it was to be kind to people. She said just because people got older didn't mean they got nicer. If they were mean when they were young, they were mean when they were old.

Be kind to people, she would tell me as she mussed my hair. Every time we visited she would tell me how much her husband had loved me and how much she loved me. Then we moved again. She died a few years later and I didn't get to go to the funeral.

When mother died I had a dream and grandma was in it. I was in the hallway of a convention hall. In one of the rooms they were having a banquet. I looked through the windows of the door and saw mother on the stage, she was the guest of honor. I looked to the side and there was grandma, sitting on a bench, smiling.

"You can't go in there, you know," she said.

I nodded and then did something I had never done in a dream. Instead of passively letting the dream flow by me, I forced myself to interact and speak. I wanted to tell grandma something. It was difficult, but I managed to speak.

"I love you, grandma."

"I know, Butch. I love you, too."

I woke up from my dream and felt at peace. At peace with my mother dying, at peace with missing grandma's funeral.

All of us are born of woman. Many of us have lost mothers and grandmothers. Through these losses we can gain wisdom. The wisdom grandma Hazel imparted was simple, "Be kind when you're young and be kind when you're old."

She worked hard her whole life. She lost the love of her life. But nothing she experienced ever stopped her from being kind.

Every once in a while, when all the negative stuff in politics and in our culture gets me down, I think of grandma Hazel. And then I go out and try to be kind to everyone I meet.