DEAR GRANDMA...
What would you say to me today, three times fired, leaving your daughters and grandson to fend off bills and life on their own?-
I see you here, watching me, as you did the night I drempt of you, the night before you died.
I was crawling up an open stair to reach you, sitting, waiting, watching my bizarre progression up, on all fours like a wounded dog, climbing to my master before I died. But it was you who was dying, and you who found enough strength to come to me in my sleep, while you struggled with your last moments of life.
When I reached you, huffing with my exertion, you looked at me with such concentrated sternness, and I heard your wordless admonishments - "Why didn't you just walk?" - the crawling unnecessary, and only harder to reach the top.
You, the matriarch of a clan of confused children, grand-children, great-grandchildren, who sat quietly watching us all in your last months, silencing a table of thirty chattering fools with one sudden burst of annoyance - "Stop It!" - How quickly we all looked up, and shut up; all your children in some reanimated womb of your making.
And I remember you as you came to me again in my sleep, the moment you died, looking confused and cross-eyed, and shocked.
You had not been able to fend this final onslaught from your warrior soul.
I remember your pallid face as I stepped to the edge of your railed bed, lying hot and still and gray. And I wonder now, why I have to push people away when I'm most frightened, and I stiffen, as you did, at the end, to not have our begging hands grasp your spirit to us, still greedy children, wanting, whining, crawling out of the four corners of the country to come to you, unbelieving, that you could not muscle through and kill the cancer killing you, killing us of our required safety.
Even in the end, the hours we all hovered over your discarded form, finally able to touch you long and warm, where you couldn't shirk us off, how we all couldn't stop staring and talking and crying and laughing at the words you muttered at us in your perusal of your final mind - "...bunch-a-crazy-bastidz..." Yes, Grandma, we are.
I wonder what you would say to me today, sitting here dazed and confused in a Florida coffee house, writing and ruminating and remembering the kind shy smile you greeted me with all the times I saw you. And the anger you held for anyone not of our blood who dared enter our space of family and not form into traditions older than you, and I know what you'd say to me today, after being fired for the third time from the same company. Listening intently, stern and furrowed... you'd say - "You were too good for them anyway!" And I'd nod and smile at you, just wanting to be a kid again, just to be able to believe Grandma must be right.
We think of you Grandma, every day. Quiet as you were, you left us more than your memory, you left us still feeling you, still loving you, still, not really believing you could be gone for good. Thank you, and I do thank God, for letting me be there to help you die, to help send you out of this world as you helped me, helped us, come in. We miss you...
LETIZIA "Letty" INTRIERI IACONO
JANUARY 6, 1920 - DECEMBER 22, 1996
WITH OUR HEARTS, THOUGHTS, AND PRAYERS ALWAYS:
LUCILLE, MARIE, ANGELO, ARLENE, RONNIE
STEVEN, STEPHEN, MARIE, LISA, SALVATORE, LAWRENCE, CHRISTOPHER, MICHELLE, SHAWN, NICOLE, DANIELLE, LATINA
ANGELO, MICHELLE, LAURI, ASHLEY, VALERIE, STEPHEN, SUSAN, KYLE, KEITH.
With special thanks and remembrance to D.K. Ward, who helped with her strength of body, loving heart and hands, and who loves "Granny" as deeply as we do.
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