The only grandmother I ever knew has been dead for 3 months today. I wanted to write about the mélange of emotions that I felt around the time of her death, but I just couldn't make the words flow. I've never daylogged before, much less written a poem. Somehow, this just came to me. Apologies if it isn't all iambic pentameter-wameter or whatever.

October 19th, 2004 started out like the day before
It was dreary and wet, but didn't rain anymore
I went over to Matthew's to talk about Halloween
Our haunted house would be fun and bring out the screams

When I got to Matthew's, his parents were away
His mom had totaled Matthew's car earlier that day
She was pretty shaken but otherwise all right
This was a bad start to a terrible night

My mom called my cell and said "I just wanted to say
Mammy failed the stress test they gave her today.
They're doing an arteriogram to see about her heart."
I didn't know it, but this was just the start.

"They'll probably keep her in the hospital overnight,
just to make sure her heart's all right.
She might have some surgery to get her heart set
But she's OK, don't worry about coming home just yet."

Mammy's situation got worse and I felt sick
I knew I should head home pretty quick
The doctors had bungled a routine arteriogram
They had broken her heart and she was really in a jam.

"They're giving her a 50/50 chance" my dad said
"They've messed up before, but now she could be dead.
They're flying her to Nashville and she may not make it"
I was worried for Pop, not knowing how he'd take it.

For 55 years, Mammy was Pop's loving wife
And this was the closest she'd come to losing her life
The same hospital had made many mistakes before
But she liked her doctors and only trusted them more
The hospital was bad but had good lawyers to boot
Despite their negligence, there would be no lawsuit.

My dad, uncle, and grandpa drove to Nashville as fast as they could
Hoping, praying, and knocking on wood
Would she survive the flight? they all wondered inside
Nobody said much as Pop quietly cried.
"I've got a bad feeling, boys" Pop said
"I think when we get there she'll already be dead."

Upon their arrival they were taken to a room
By its size and seclusion, they knew it spelled doom
A doctor came in and said "She has died",
And sat quietly as the three of them cried.
"She died in flight", the doctor said
"Before the chopper took off, she was practically dead"

My dad called my mom, who told me through her tears
The words that confirmed the worst of my fears
"She didn't make it," my mom said through a scream
I held her as she cried, it was like a bad dream

I soon called Matthew to tell him the news
He paused for a second and said "I'll get my shoes"
"It might take a little while, but I'm coming over tonight
And I'll be around until you're feeling all right."

I knew Matthew was my best friend, a friend like no other
But after that night, he became more like a brother.
I had always been there for him, you see
And on my darkest night he was there for me.

Mammy's visitation was set to start at four
But a lot of people came in before
Many of the people Mammy had known for years
They laughed with the family and joined in our tears
There were others there who she'd met twice or less
But somehow touched their lives, nonetheless.

I wanted friends and family to see the steel in my eyes
And to notice that I never broke down and cried
They noticed and asked "Why aren't you crying?
You should be sad about your grandmother dying."

Before answering them I would think of Mammy's faith
The faith that always carried her through
And how through Jesus, anyone can be born anew.

I thought of that a lot when I would say,
"We couldn't help that it ended this way
God follows a plan that we can't always see
And this is how things were meant to be."

"She beat the nursing home, and the hospital too
She didn't die slowly with nothing to do.
She died with her shoes on, still laced up tight
The day she died, she had plans for that night."

"She died unafraid and without any pain,
Something many people wish for in vain.
I didn't have to watch her body vanish like the breeze
Or succumb to the living death of Alzheimer's Disease."

"I got 20 good years with her," I said with a smile
"And in my book, that's a good while.
Some people are blessed with more time, others with less
But my 20 years with her were my 20 best."

Mammy rode to church in her daddy's '30 Ford
And there, as a child, she made peace with the Lord
In the Good Book she found what Jesus said:
"Whoever believes in me will never be dead.
They'll go straight to heaven to be with me
And live without pain for eternity."

Mammy loved Jesus and certainly knew God
She never backed down when people said it was odd
She trusted in Jesus and with God, had a friend
It was He who decided when her life would end.

It's been three months since Mammy went away
And I still think about her every day
But eventually the good memories replace the bad
And thinking of her doesn't make me sad.

Pop is still taking it hard, I've often seen him cry
There's little I can do except stand silently by
It hurts me inside when I look through his tears
And see the lost love of 55 years

In many ways, Mammy shaped who I became
Proud of my heritage and of my last name
She taught me to be humble before our Creator
And I have faith in the last thing I ever told her:

"See you later"

---

Virginia Ruth Troxler-Prince

March 23rd, 1931 ~ October 19th, 2004

---

April 4th, 2005: Mammy has been dead for nearly six months. Today I cried for the first time. It's about time.

So I'm home again, ready to settle back into the daily/nightly grind of minor academic stress inflated by major procrastination. I slept through my first class Monday, skipped my Long Hard Slog biology lecture Tuesday, turned in homework late to every teacher I'd promised prompt and proper little scribbles, crashed at weird hours, and in general made a total muck of things in a state of post-inebriation and sleep deprivation for the past two days.

In exchange for this, I got to attend yclept's Loterific nodermeet feast extravaganza. I call it a bargain of astounding misproportions.

Transport from the stinking marshes of the flatlands to the realm of highways and highstrung truck-drivers was provided by Mr. I-know-every-damn-road-across-the-continent Wiccanpiper. I packed into a nice and cozy car with him, LaggedyAnne, BriarCub, and later eien_meru at about 4 a.m. on Friday morning, fully expecting this to be the Longest Car Ride of My Life. Anything but. The bunch of us chatted, sang, ranted, and mumbled our way across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey with bare notice of the passing time. I'd like to request Wiccanpiper and his coterie for all my future travelling needs. Beats lost luggage and strip-searches from surly pseudo-cops by a bajillion.

Arrival at yclept's rustic cottage (well, as rustic as one can manage on the East Coast) clocked in at around 10pm. Those noders who had already congregated were breaking out the cheap wine just as we burst in, which was as good an omen as I could ask for. I poured something French and astringent, then mingled in a half-assed fashion trying to learn everyone's names.

Now, I'm not particularly good at names. There are people on my dorm floor I've talked to regularly for months whose names I still have trouble recalling. I'm that annoying person who never, ever addresses you by your name when he's trying to get your attention because I know everything about you except your name. I need a second to remember my own damn name. It's a perverse social deficit. Nonetheless, I was dead-set on making sure names were going to get tied to the usernames along with faces. So imagine my dismay:

"Hi.. I'm Chris, avalyn on E2."
"Hello, I'm cbustapeck, also Chris."
"I'm Chris-O, or just Chris."
"Heya, I'm Chris. Ysardo on E2."
"Chris. Not a noder, just Chris."

Etcetera. In all likelihood, I've forgotten and/or misattributed a Chris or three, but frankly I think forces beyond the ken of mere man were playing with me in a manner most cruel, so I declare the utter failure of Operation Don't be a Dork and Learn People's Names Correctly. Fair warning.

The evening was spent in a pleasant daze of intelligent and/or hilarous conversation with sundry nodertypes, including an especially riotous commentary on yclept's ornamental goldfish and his imposing brain tumor with either Scribe or Ch'i-Lin—I'm not quite sure which of you it was because I was ducking frunk by that time. Feel free to stab me with pointy sticks for the memory lapse.

Next morning Wiccanpiper whipped out his Pancake Mix of Doom and made us all some tasty weekend breakfast fare while people wandered out of bed, got themselves showered/sobered up, gathered firewood, and prepared the living room for movie viewing. I got to meet redbaker during this period after several conversations over the /msg-ing system, who proved just as cool in real person (and way, way too knowledgeable about U.S. presidents). Thereafter, yckie, Hyphenated, and two non-noders occupied the kitchen for seekrit cooking rituals not to be described by the uninitiated. The rest of us wandered in and out of conversation in a circle in the living room. And altusmens knitted. Continually.

Around 2pm, we gradually streamed up to the first floor to behold the utter madness that is yckie's cooking skills. She had charted out an edible journey from Bag End to the Grey Havens with thematic cohesion, a crazy feast of apple/pear pizzas, vegetable assortments, sashimi, guacomole, cured ham, roasted tomatos, turkey, s'mores carved into individual figures, dead marshes hummus, rocky-road fudge, Lothlorien cookies, breads and cheeses, and... I can't even mention it all. This was only the typical tastiness. More spectacular courses dominated the rest of the table.

There was the Gates of Moria fudge sculpture with ominously opening doors and belieing elven inscription (the terrible secret of this mini-Moria being that the fudge was so damn good I could only handle a little slice at a time). There was the One Ring cake, tengwar encircled, gold-coated, and oh so tasty. There was the Mt. Doom ice-cream concoction, which leaned a little too periously to the side and collapsed on itself most tragicaly when we didn't get to it quick enough in the course of the feast, but filled happy stomaches just as well. There was the lembas bread, the sweet, sweet lembas bread. Seriously, she has the recipe up, go make some for yourself within the next twenty-four hours. Besides being of an excellent filling quality and good by itself or with toppings, it also tastes and looks exactly how one imagines lembas bread. Yckie could discuss this edible invention philosophically. She is the uncontested master of lembas. There was a frickin' foot-tall Shelob made out of creampuffs. Serious chef-fu we're talking about here.

Of course, all this served the purpose of merely enhancing the Lord of the Rings experience. We got started around 2:30pm with the Fellowship and took breaks between each disk. In addition, folks meandered in and out of the room to grab more food or to rest up and talk during a lull in the movie. I myself spent a while talking with ameriwire, who stopped by for a spurt on his way to see friends further south. Gorgonzola made a similar brief appearence to prove that he knows more about Middle Earth than you ever will during the prize drawing. By the time we were at the third movie, it was well into the early morning and most noders had curled up in bed dreaming of balrogs and seeing stones, but I stayed the course long enough to get into a long and heated argument between yckie, Walter, Wiccanpiper, Julie and myself about the Scouring of the Shire and its merits as a book ending. Intellectual debates about geeky subjects at 5am rule.

Eventually it was time to head homeward. I trundled myself back into the car with the same entourage, forgetting pretty much everything important at yckie's house in my sleep deprived state (I'll get the postage for that to you soon Dale!). There was time yet for a few dozen inside jokes (And my grandmother... said the world... would end... in FIRE.) that grew progressively more nonsensical as the night wore on before WP brought me nicely to my doorstep and I crashed into bed, far beyond satisfied with my first stateside nodermeet.

Thanks all!