 Grandma's Last Laughby Libby J. Atwater As the plane descended through thick cloud cover, sleet falling heavily upon its wings, the world outside seemed as cold and gray as the metal of the aircraft. The weather in Chicago this first day of spring mirrored our feelings. We were here to attend Grandma's funeral. When we walked out the gate at O'Hare, I saw the security checkpoint where Grandma had been stopped eight years earlier. She'd led the delegation of aunts, uncles, and cousins who'd come to see us off for Los Angeles. As Grandma walked through the security checkpoint, the alarm sounded. She stopped, emptied her coat pockets, and walked through a second time. The alarm rang again. The guard asked Grandma to step aside. His colleague ran a detection wand over her body. "Beep, beep, beep," went the wand. The guard asked Grandma to hold her arms out, and he frisked this 85-year-old woman in an old wool coat and babushka. Grandma laughed nervously, although she usually liked being the center of attention. Aunt Ella and I stood nearby, so convulsed with laughter that tears ran down our cheeks. The guard finally discovered that the wand only beeped around Grandma's head: her hearing aid had set it off. Passing this checkpoint always made me smile and think of her. The sleet turned to snow during the 40-minute ride from the airport to our cousins' home. Two days before, on the Feast of St. Joseph, Grandma had eaten her breakfast and died. St. Joseph is the saint of a happy death, and Grandma had been praying to him for a long time. After 93 years on earth, she was ready to go on to the next world and join the rest of her generation. Born on All Saints' Day, dead on the Feast of St. Joseph: the two most significant events of her life occurred on holy days. In the eyes of our family, she was special. Images of Grandma flashed through my mind as the car slowed on the slippery streets. I pictured the Halloween that she answered the door in a Star Wars' Yoda mask, startling the young children at the door. Her short, white hair stood up in wisps around the green rubber mask. We laughed, and she insisted we take her picture. I didn't feel sad that she died as she wished, only sorry that she could no longer be around to laugh her infectious laugh as she told one of her stories. Grandma's eyes lit up each time she recalled the winter night she and two girlfriends walked home from ice skating. A man approached them. Grandma noticed that his pants were unzipped, exposing his private parts. She made the sign of the cross and yelled, "Jesus, Joseph, and Mary." Then she slammed him with her ice skates. The man limped away howling as Grandma and her friends ran the rest of the way home. Grandma managed to find the humor in every situation, even the Great Depression. During this period, Grandma's family of five shared their three-bedroom flat with her sister's family of four. One day her sister announced that she was pregnant. "Can you imagine?" Grandma giggled. "There was no privacy in that apartment, yet they managed to conceive and now that child is a nun!" I'd miss her stories, although I'd heard them many times. I'd miss putting my arms around her, kissing her soft skin, so supple for someone her age, and burying my face in her cotton-like white hair as I bent to hug her shrinking frame. Although she'd been a good eater and had had a full figure most of her life, thanks to strudel, ham, sugar, and cream, her body shrunk as she aged and her appetite waned. There would be no more pale blue eyes to look into as she told the story of how she left Austria. "I grew up in a village along the Austro-Hungarian border, and my family had a farm. My job was to collect the eggs from the hens each day before I left for school. One morning I went to my father and said, 'I hate collecting eggs. I don't want to do it any more.' My father glared at me and said, 'Everyone in this family has a job. Yours is to collect eggs, and that is what you'll do!' I stared back and said, 'I will not! I am going to America.' I left the next day." The entire village repeated this story for the next 50 years, especially when Grandma returned for a visit. Today they rang the village's church bells announcing her death. Grandma was a better participant than a listener. If you told a story, she'd wait for you to finish, then try to top it. Once when our two sons were younger and frequently ill, I sat down with Grandma for a cup of tea. "Grandma, it's not fair," I whined. "Poor Ross has had two ear surgeries, and he's only two. Now he and Darryl have had tonsillitis continually for seven months. They keep passing it back and forth. I'm so tired of this." She calmly replied, "When my children were small, we were quarantined in our house for three Christmases in a row. One year it was scarlet fever, the next measles, and the third whooping cough. Don't ever think that life is fair." Grandma had endured many rough times, yet her sense of humor kept her going. She taught me to find the light side of even the darkest situations with her stories. I remembered her words when we arrived at our cousins' house to drop off our bags. Then we were whisked away to Grandma's rosary service to visit with family and friends. Sadly, only one of Grandma's children could attend. Her daughter was home in Los Angeles recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor, and her younger son was in a nearby hospital's cardiac care facility from the strain of his mother's death. It was up to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren to carry on with her arrangements. Grandma looked beautiful lying in the open, ornate casket, her beauty frozen in time for all to admire. Good old Grandma, I thought. She'd be pleased with how well she looks. She always liked to dress up, especially for a camera. Just then, our Austrian cousin, Paul, came up and snapped a photo. He insisted that all the cousins line up in front of the coffin for one last photo with Grandma, so that he could show it to the family back home. While the adults stood grim-faced, three-year-old Patrick, her youngest great-grandchild, made us smile. He knelt beside her and said, "Grandma, eat your soup. You'll feel better." My husband, our sons, and I slept soundly that night after the long trip and the emotional rosary. Snow fell silently while we slept, its white powder covering the roads, trees, homes, street signs, and the ground where Grandma would soon be interred. The day of her funeral dawned cold and clear, but the sun never broke through the frosty clouds. We dressed in our warmest clothes and drove to the mortuary for a last goodbye. Then we boarded a sleek limousine for the church where Grandma had worshipped most of her life. It was clear that the priest had not known Grandma. He did not add any personal touches or funny stories to remind us of the woman we loved during the perfunctory service. Afterwards cousin Paul made us pose for more pictures beside the closed coffin. Then the funeral procession drove by the home where Grandma and Grandpa had lived for more than 50 years and paused in a farewell salute before heading to the cemetery. The morning had grown colder, and the sun had given up its attempts to shine between the clouds. We shivered as we headed for the shelter of the mausoleum to listen to a few final words. As I stood in the snow with my teeth chattering, I realized that Grandma had played one last joke on me. A year earlier when she was staying with my in-laws in Los Angeles, she and I visited in the living room on an especially cold day. I shivered and searched for a sweater. Grandma said, "If you think this is cold, you should be in Chicago. What if I died today and you had to fly back there to bury me?" "Oh, Grandma, don't be so morbid," I replied. Yet here I was shivering in a snow-covered cemetery this second day of spring, realizing that Grandma had had the last laugh. 
Libby Atwater is a SLN Affiliate, journalist, teacher, and personal historian who has
extensive experience writing for nonprofit organizations, educational
institutions, magazines, community newspapers, and businesses. She is the author of three books, and is working on her own memoirs.
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