Don’t get me wrong. I loved my junialeeg grandmother. She was generous and intelligent, and she never forgot a birthday. Both her penmanship and her grammar were impeccable.

Mary lived in New Orleans long enough to send her son through a preppy high school and marry him off to the girl next door, before she moved back to her rightful place in Dallas, Texas. My first memory of her is the day she insisted that we call her, “Grandmama’.” You know, like Endora on Bewitched?

Mary’s first husband was a Texas millionnaire named Ewing, just like on the TV show Dallas, except without the stupid hats. A few years ago we had our company holiday party at Southfork Ranch, where much of the action took place on Dallas. It wasn’t hugely impressive, but we had a really great time.

Mary died the week after 9/11. The last contact I had with her was an answering machine message I left for her after the calamity struck. I wanted to see how she was taking the news, but I’m not sure she even knew it was happening. She never returned my call anyway.

She donated her body to science, so by the time I heard of her death, she was gone. That is, until four months ago when she visited my sister in the living room of my parents’ home, where she was having a conversation with someone my sister couldn’t see at the time. She always was very social.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 6:06 pm and is filed under US and Canada, meanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.