I love you, Grandma...

...I love you to, John.

This was the end of the last conversation I had with my Grandma a few weeks ago. She died just a few moments ago from complications due to cancer. I remember the conversation (and most of the conversations) that I had with her very well. That conversation just repeated in my head as if an echo when my Dad called and simply said, "She's gone."

I was a lucky person to have known her... and a luckier person to have been able to call her my Grandma. (more after link)

There was always something special about Molly Spring (my mom's mom). You could take one look at her and see it... you could feel it. It's as if she always had an extra helping hand.

Even in the end she had a little extra help. When she was first diagnosed with cancer middle of last year the doctors said that it would be a few weeks at best. That turned into four months. Ten months later she finally slips from her mortal coil to begin her next journey. The entire time she never had pain, nor any wants. Heck, because this was the first time in her life (that I've seen) that she wasn't the one that had to be responsibile for anything she was actually able to relax and laugh. I now know where I get my sense of humor from. Grandma had the most sardonic and edged sense of humor that I'd seen. The first time I saw it I was like "what in the blue hell was that?" Mom laughed.

She was certainly the matriarch of the Spring family. She had four
children; Pam (My mom), Craig, Dee, and Brian (whom my middle name is based on). From them there are four grandkids. Joy, Lisa, Lee, and myself. Take a half step UP the family tree back up to the Smith section (her maiden name) and based off the links of her siblings (she was one of four or five... I'm having a hard time remembering) there was a small army of cousins, nephews, nieces, and other relations floating around.

And she was smack dab in the middle of most of it.

I'll always remember her as the one "in charge". Sure, Grandpa was the "man of the house"... But Grandma ran it. She cooked, she cleaned, she mowed the lawn, she pulled the weeds... She did everything. And she's the one that got me hooked on Mountain Dew at a young age. Pepsi should make an award in her name since she pretty much didn't stop drinking it until she couldn't any longer.

She always had the strength to do it all... or at least made it look like she had the strength to do it all. For Thanksgiving she'd be up at something insane like 3am starting the food in the kitchen... I learned to stop thinking it was insane whenever I tasted said food. That was food that was made by someone that cared and wanted their food to be the best... and it damn sure was.

She spoiled me rotten. I was the only male grandchild (on both sides actually), so that certainly helped. I never realized what it really meant to have someone willing to always be there to help you until much later in my life (I'm a bit thick and slow sometimes).

She's also the one that I can accredit with helping me learn how to read at such a young age. Heck, she's even the one I can say that got me into comic books. See, whenever she'd go to the grocery store when my mom was growing up she'd normally go pikc up a "funny book" or two. These were some of the old classics. Batman, X-Men, Sgt. Rock, The Haunted Tank, etc. Well these were comics that they kept there at their house forever and a day. So when I was barely kneehigh to a hobbit I remember sitting down and reading the comics. Sure, at first it was more of a "looking at the pictures" sort of thing. But it's pretty damn cool when one of the first words you can learn how to read is "budda" (not the diety, but the sound that the machine guns made in the older Sgt. Rock comics). From reading those comics my reading level was far advanced then most children my age. I was reading "Lord of the Rings" and Aasimov's Foundation Trilogy (my father helped spoil my reading itch) when most kids were barely doing "Encyclopedia Brown".

She was always proud of me. She always said so. And I know it was honest as she was an honest woman. I remember asking her why she was proud of me a few years back. I had felt like I hadn't acheived what I should have for someone my age. Heck, not only at my age was she running a household my mom had had me for a few years and was learning to be an Officer's wife in the Army. I was single and had just started a new job back here in Virginia and didn't own the place I was living in. I felt like a failure in a lot of ways. She told me she was proud of me because I kept doing what I wanted to do, that I was trying to be honest to myself, and that I had good friends and treated people right.

That conversation helped me turn some of my thinking around and move on with things. I'm still single... so that hasn't changed... But I do own a house now... and I still am at that "new" job in Virginia. I still do what I like to do, I'm still learning how to be honest with myself, and I certainly treat those that I consider good friends and those that consider me a good friend as best as I can.

I know she's still proud of me... She told me so a few weeks ago. A guy can't ask for much more then that.

I'll miss you Grandma. I'll always love you.

.ungawa