This weekend I went home again. My parents didn't want me to come at first because it's only a week until graduation, but I told them that I wanted to go to my great-grandma's funeral. And it the whole weekend was amazing, mostly in the way that it brought us all together and showed how strong we are. On Saturday, there was a memorial service at her nursing home. The "memorial coordinator" there, at Friendship Village, told me that she does one of them a week, and I tried to be happy for her, because it is something to keep people busy and eating cake. I told her that it must be a really rewarding line of work and she agreed. My first cousin once removed Sara ran the service (she's a congregational minister) and different people in my extended family took turns doing readings. I told a story about how I always called her "Grandma" because the "great" made it too long to say over and over; and she used to say, "Nicole, I'm not just a grandma, I'm a GREAT grandma." No one cried very much during the service because it was mostly happy memories, and also, I think, because there were strangers there. I spend 20 minutes afterwards talking to a man who knew me but I had no clue who he was! He told me all about how his son owns the Frito-Lays corn fields in Mexico and that he could send me there because he's highly involved in Rotary. Before he left, he told me to call him...I had to ask around, but I finally realized that it was Mr. Mindzinger, who is my grandparents best friend! I thought he was just a nursing home man.

The burial was like something out of a movie. My dad hates it when I compare life to movies, as though art influences life to any extent at all. But it wasn't that we acted like charicatures, it was that I never realized how emotional a situation can make you and that movie scenes are more realistic than I used to believe. Anyway, I had to sit next to my Great-Grandma on the way to the burial because she was in a box in between my grandma and I (he sweetly put the armrest down after I screamed when I first saw it). After church, the pastor climbed out a window into the memorial garden and put the box in the ground. Then he read a poem by Tennyson. I started crying first, but mostly because I kept thinking "great grandma's in that box" and it was so bizarre. But then, suddenly, everyone starting crying...we were in a hallway, next to the coffee-hour atrium, and we all huddled in a big hug and kept crying: it was me, my grandma, my aunts Emily, Alison, and Jennifer, my mom, and my grandpa with his arms around us. It helped me to stop crying to see everyone together like that, because we all knew what the other was missing. I realized that Great Grandma was alreay in heaven (and was probably already being told, "Yes, Roberta, we've heard that story before"), and she was probably pleased that we all missed her so much still. And we're all so supportive of each other, which I think it very rare, and so we're lucky too. Our circle of grief broke up as quickly as it was formed, as my grandma went to find out where my great grandpa was (in the memorial garden), my grandpa packed up the spades, and my mom and I went to chat-up the handsome pastor (very Harrison Ford meets Colm Feore). And then I was driven right to the airport and flew back to St. Louis.

I think that my Great Grandma still lives on in my family in so many ways. My grandma repeats stories now (always fun), my grandpa refuses to wear his hearing aid and we all yell, and I'm going to be a teacher, just like she was (although it made her professionally well respected in the community and that's yet to be seen by me today). I'm here because she started a family in the 1930's with Clifton Beaver. She had a good sense of humor too: she named my grandma Sandy. I'm so blessed that I got to know her and my great grandpa as long as I did.

Thank you so much to everyone who sent well-wishes. Life is moving so fast these days!
Upcoming activities:
May 20th-Arts & Sciences reception
May 21st-Graduation
May 22nd-Go home
June 5th-John's Graduation from High School
June 7th-We move into my parents' new town house
June 11th-I move to St. Paul
June 14th-Graduate school starts

Oh, and did I mention that I'm splitting my apartment with my grandparents (about a week every month)? We're in for a long year!
-nicole