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Monday, when my mum called at seven in the morning me to tell me the news that my grandmother had died, I was not completely awake, so it took a bit for the news to register–about one latte to be exact.

I find this awkward introduction rather amusing and rather sad. First, because my own mental state upon hearing of my grandmother’s death matched her mental state over the last few years and secondly, because my mental state at the time mirrored my grandmother’s over the last few years.

And that’s the double edged sword of having a relative with alzheimers, dementia, or whatever else it can be called. As time’s arrow progresses, what starts as forgetfulness, slowly becomes a sense of distracted attention until finally an almost infantile fog descends. Slowly, bit by bit, the person we love seems to slip away, yet somewhere, deep inside something remains, and we see it in brief, but brilliant flashes of recognition.

Since my grandfather, her husband of over fifty-four years passed away, she really had been taking her last, very long goodbye. And for those of us close to my grandmother, it’s hard for us to remember what my she was like before she got sick. So, in these past few days while in our own fog that accompanies loss, we’ve been telling each other stories as we seek to reacquaint ourselves with the woman who was a child, a wife, a sister, a mother (a working mother to boot,) a grandmother and even a great grandmother.

So as we say our goodbyes I want to share a few of my memories of my grandma

I will always remember the kitchen floor where my grandfather taught me to play marbles and I would sit for what seemed like hours while my grandmother cooked or watched her favorite soap opera “The Young and the Restless”, this was back when the Hoff was young and hot.

I remember taking bubble baths and then standing on top of the toilet seat so my tall or “Big” grandma could more easily towel me dry. I think that after raising my father she was quite delighted to have two girls for grandchildren.

I remember many summers when I would stay with them for a week, and my grandmother would set up the hose and sprinkler in the backyard. There are even a few memories of heading to the local public pool where my grandmother still cut a fine figure with her Ann Miller-rivaling legs.

I remember the beautiful white pleated skirt she would often wear when she and my grandfather went out dancing and how that skirt entered family legend when she rescued a stray dog after one evening at the Aragon ballroom. That Luckey dog, who was soon to become my family’s dog, refused to ride in the back seat of the yellow station wagon and would only ride in the front seat that night–thus necessasitating a trip to the dry cleaner for that lovely white skirt.

I remember the late night movies I’d try to stay up for when sleeping over; the attic that always had something interesting tucked in a corner, the Avon Catalogs the could be turned into endless mathematical story problems (and the samples she’d save for my sister and I); and the seemingly endless walk up a dark hill one halloween that just the two of us made when I was only 7 or 8.

So, like Russel in the movie _UP_ said, “It might sound boring, but I think boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most”.

Those are just some of the memories I have and will always have of my grandmother. Hopefully you have many of your own that can tell yourselves and those close to you. Stories about the woman born during the First World War who could play any song she heard on her piano, who loved to laugh, who managed to find a lasting love during war time in the 40s and then raise a fine son and later a good parent in his own right. Or perhaps you’ll just remember Bernadette’s smile, as through all of those almost 97 years, it was the one thing that never failed.

Last month I finished a project that took me about three weeks to do, and the end resulting Instructional Video is now up on YouTube. It’s rather large and is thus broken up into 5 sections (Part I is here). So, if you’ve ever wanted to lead a raid in World of Warcraft, now’s your chance!.

If you just want to watch the trailer….

How to Lead a Raid

Pics are here.

Which brings up an important point: the Google stats dingus for WordPress is soon only to be available via Jetpack. I’ve never been a big Cloud Computing person and only put the plugin in place as a stop-gap. I find it wrong that a third party site is collecting data about the websites I run under the guise of “easy to use” log analysis. So the rest of this week will be spent making Awstats happy. Then I will finally finish off the PHP script for my photo blogging (another of my turns away from the clouds.) Then it will be time to finally get in my studio.

Or at least that is the plan.

Still it’s nice to have a proper website(s) again.