Happy Birthday, Frances

My grandmother would have been 88 today.  This is the first time December 5th has passed in my lifetime without her and I find myself missing her awfully lately.  A thousand times a day I think of something to ask her: where did she get those great twirly chairs, which are now in my loft, that Beth and I used to spin ourselves sick on in her living room?  What does she think of the new president elect?  What lessons from the Great Depression, which encompassed her childhood, are the most important to remember and bring back now that we’re possibly heading into that sort of economic climate again?  What was her very favorite Christmas cookie?  What were the holidays like for her as a child?  How did she ever manage to raise five daughters and still look both elegant and put together in every photograph I have seen of her?  If she could have lived anywhere in the world where would she live?  How do I make braided rugs?  Where does one buy corn toasties?  I start for the phone a few times a week with her phone number rolling through my head, my fingers just about to graze the receiver when I realize that I cannot call her anymore.  I regret, so deeply, all of the times I thought to call her, but didn’t, when I still could have.
Despite this ache of missing her, I sometimes get the strangest sense that she is here, that if I could catch the light at a certain angle I would be able to see her sitting at my table sipping cup of hot black coffee, and if I close my eyes I can hear her laugh as clearly as if she really were right here.  With all that we do not know about death, it seems perfectly plausible to me that a woman known for her stubbornness in life would find a way for her energy to stick around those she loved in death, if that was what she wanted.  Maybe that isn’t the case, but the thought that it could possibly be brings me great comfort in her physical absence.  I hope, wherever her spirit has gone, that she can feel the love I have for her, today and every day.  If she could read this she would give me that certain look, both pleased and embarrassed, and she would say “Oh, Sara” in a tone that belied both her love and her tendency to reprimand us when we were being good by doing something nice for her.  I miss that, so much.