It’s common knowledge: as we get older, we get busier. Uncles and aunts move away. The grand kids are all grown up, starting lives and families of their own, making new traditions but inadvertently discontinuing previous ones that defined our childhoods.
I remember as a kid growing up in So Cal, we would make the 3 hour journey “all the way up north” to Paso Robles/Atascadero/Templeton/Morrow Bay. Sleepy little central coast towns, now famous for wines and olives and rodeos, excited for their chain stores, because they used to be small towns in the middle of nowhere, destinations for no one (except for the folks who knew of the natural hot springs at the very North end of town!!!).
Last week I flew to this familiar place to visit family. Not for the yearly holiday trip or a happy milestone, but for an occasion all too familiar as we grow older: a funeral.
Our Gramma Geri’s life was one full of love, noise, the hustle and bustle of raising four boys with her husband, smart-ass sarcasm from all five (not to mention the grandkids/great grandkids!). Her home was the hub of all things family, wherever it happened to be. I swear she’s in mid-chuckle in this picture from Olan Mills. I swear I can still hear her laugh. I hope I never forget that.
The bad thing about funerals: the sad services with beautiful songs and poems, during which we try SO hard not to make that ugly, snotty, cry face we hope no one sees as it contorts against our greatest efforts. Printed programs telling of her life as if it were a Wikipedia entry, smooshing to fit over 8.5 decades of accomplishments and events onto one piece of paper printed by minimum-wage employees at Staples who don’t even seem to notice as they hand you your loved one’s life, stacked in one kraft recycled box, ready for check-out.
The good thing about funerals: the time we got to spend together. Collectively, our family traveled thousands of miles to gather once again at her house, our family’s home.
I wouldn’t trade the world for the time we all got to spend together, looking at her things, going through her photo albums, telling stories. I’m not sure if I’ve ever learned so much about our family in such a short, two day span. I just wish we could have shared the laughs and the tears with her, and with the other members of our family that have been gone for so long (Papa Chuck… Uncle Tom…).
My sister Hillary, looking at an album from the 40’s and n early image of Geri and Chuck.
My dad Mike, telling some zany story about how his brother took two sisters to two different school dances. I hope this wasn’t typical McConnell-boy behavior, but something tells me it was.
My cousin Amy holding a pic of my uncle Dave. Those cheeks, those big eyes, that cute curl. Can you believe we’re related!! He just makes my heart melt!
My cousin pam with a high school picture of her dad, my uncle Tom (p.s. he was a TOTAL spitting image of Richard Gere in An Officer And A Gentleman when he was young!)
So…. can I share with you some of the things I learned about my family? They say once you put something on the internet it never goes away, which, in this case, is kinda nice.
Geraldine Vincent was born in 1924 in Indiana, and lived right through the Great Depression. She even lived in a work camp tent with her aunt at one point. I wish I could have talked with her more about that, I’ll bet she had some interesting stories.
Geraldine’s mom, my great grandma Nellie, lived in a time when it was fun to be quite fancy. She thought a girl should wear a skirt. Gramma Geri hated that; she liked pants although she had quite the pair of legs (she was quite proud of those!). When GG Nellie found out that folks in First Class were offered complimentary whiskey, she saved her pennies so she could fly in style. She would collect the little bottles and save them for a rainy day. Are you ready for this? Last week, my sister and I found ourselves in First Class, which we did not request, pay for, book ourselves, nor mention WHY we were flying. Coincidence? You tell me, but I’d like to think it was their gift, to make us feel fancy, too.
GG Nellie and gramma Geri on a trip to the city (New York?) when she was REALLY young. Geri at the beach years later (woo hoo! sassy lady!)
In 1944, she married my grandfather, Chuck, who was QUITE the strapping young Coast Guard and hailed from Ohio. Apparently he had a uni-brow Frida Kahlo could only wish for, but he was dang handsome anyway!
Clockwise from left: one of my uncle Tom’s weddings and my cousins Pam and Jeff. Geri as a girl. My pops as a handsome highschooler (wowzaas!). Yep, that’s me in the very corner….(yowzaas! What happened there?!). Poppa Chuck and his awesome driving skillz!
From ’45 to ’52 she was poppin’ em out like puppies. These boys were cu-ute. And trrrrouble at that. We all adore these images of our dads and uncles.
I remember her as a crossword-lover, card-player, cruise-taker, romance novel-reader, and an occasional painter. I couldn’t find her paintings when I was there, but I remember she showed them to me once when I was going through my paint-by-numbers phase as a kid.
An old camera cousin Marty found in the top of a closet while looking for an iron.
It still has Kodachrome film in it, half shot, memories forgotten until now. We can’t wait to develop it- a treasure for sure.
Another old camera: a Kodak Brownie.
A matchbook collection. Mostly from her favorite casinos, just because.
Father Dowling, Murder She Wrote, and Perry Mason. She has a whole closet full of her favorite episodes.
At her service, her friends and our family got up to share stories, jokes, and anecdotes from Geri’s life. I had my own story, silly as it was, from the point of view of a young child, but it was one that stuck in my head. I was hesitant to share it because I thought she’d just KILL me, but as it turns out, my family thought it was hilarious and just like her- she was open and honest and always told it like it was. So here it is. One of my clearest memories from childhood with gramma Geri took place in her house in Atascadero. A quiet two or three bedroom rambler built in the 60’s with flat crab grass out front, a very short driveway, the tallest bar stools I’d ever seen at the kitchen counter, and, I think, a wash out back (the kind for when it rains really hard and the water needs to make a path out of the neighborhood). The blue light was streaming in the bedroom, which was a little bit dark yet felt a whole lot calming. We were getting ready for some errand or every day event, I don’t remember and it wasn’t important. What was important was that she was putting on her final touches before we headed out the door, and as she turned to me, she said something to my young, 6 or 8 year old self I didn’t quite understand at the time but now makes me smile. It went something like this.
“Laurel, you have to promise me something.”
“Okay gramma, what?”
“When I get old, and I’m in a nursing home and I can’t do it anymore, you HAVE to get rid of my chin hairs for me.”
As I grew older and realized what she meant, I always secretly, quietly searched her sweet face, trying to keep my silly childhood promise.
