A Life Well Lived

My grandmother Phyllis as a teenager

My beautiful grandmother will be laid to rest this Friday. 

I am grateful she is no longer suffering, but the loss is immense. I am staying in Spain during her funeral, and I am okay with that decision. When you make the choice to live overseas, this is your greatest fear, losing a loved one back in the United States. I had an amazing week with her in November, and I am thankful for friends and family who encouraged me to take time off of work and take the trip across the big pond to see her, not that I needed much arm twisting. It seemed overwhelming at the time, but once I was home, I knew I did the right thing. 

I haven’t said much in recent months about her health because that was her story to tell, not mine, and I don’t think someone’s life should be remembered for their struggles or death.  She was so much more than that. 

She was smart and resourceful. She moved often with her father’s work and moved to Jackson while in high school. Her new high school said she knew enough to graduate, so that was that. After 11 years of school and at age 16, was then on her own, working for Bell South. She worked her way from telephone operator to management in the Jackson office. She took pride in her job and loved it, and she had a very rewarding career. I always said if she had gone to college, she would have run the entire office. She always underestimated how smart she really was. 

She was the hardest working person I know. She often said, “God gave me big hands and feet because He knew I would have to work hard.” I don’t think she had to work as much as she wanted to work. When she retired, she spent hours in the yard, making beautiful flowerbeds. There was always work to do. 

She could cook anything from scratch and cooked well, and some of my best memories are shelling peas around a kitchen table. Nobody could shell peas as efficiently as my grandma. If you didn’t grow up sitting around a table laughing and sharing stories while shelling peas, you really missed out. 

She was brave. She went from living in Mobile and Jackson as an Episcopalian to married life in a small Mississippi town full of Southern Baptists. If you are from the south, you know how brave that can be. 

She raised her only child to be fearless and brave, too. He got her work ethic and her stubborn streak, a good combination for running a business and raising two teenage daughters. 

She loved beautiful things, especially clothes. I wish I had more of her fashion sense and love of shopping. She made sure my sister and I had a wardrobe for fall and spring. She bought most of our school clothes and bought me my first set of “teaching clothes,” which were anything but dowdy.

When my husband and I married, we wanted a quick ceremony at the JP. She insisted we get married by a preacher. A few years later, I asked her about her wedding to my grandfather Dudley, who she was married to for 66 years before his death. She said, “Oh honey, we ran down to the courthouse and got married on my lunch break!” I always feel like she tricked me into a preacher wedding and got a good laugh out of it.

She loved my granddad Dudley. They married when she was 20. They held hands until the day he died. She called him Paw, he called her Maw, and they had a funny system of writing notes to each other because they were always in and out of the house, even if they were supposedly retired. 

If there could be a patron saint of middle children, it would be my grandma. If you are a middle child, know she spoke out—often—about the indignities suffered while being stuck in the middle, and even if most of us don’t know your struggle, she made sure—often—to mention it. 

That being said, she loved her family freely and fiercely. Her sister Mildred and sister in law Carolyn were her best friends. She loved her 2 younger brothers Charles and P.J., and she was fiercely protective of them, even when they were grown men. She only had one child, but loved her nieces and nephews as her own. I am so lucky to have a large, extended Weiss family. 

I’m lucky I got her love of reading. I last visited her in November, and although her memory was failing, she was still reading. She kept a notebook where she summarized what she had read and kept a page of characters to help her along. As an English teacher, I marveled at her tenacity to complete a book., even at 94 years old. 

My greatest vanity is I love when people tell me I look like her. We were only 44 years apart, and more than once I was asked if she were my mother. I didn’t get all of her grace and elegance, but I am hopeful that I age as well as she did. She kept Esteé Lauder in business and kept up with her nightly facial routine until the end. Wear sunscreen and wash your face every night, ladies. Wear a good moisturizer every day. That’s her secret.

She beat breast cancer and even while going through treatment, she flew out to Washington to visit her first great-grandson and her namesake. My favorite memory of her is driving with my grandparents and a newborn from the Hoh Rainforest  in northern Washington to the California coast in a rented van, winding our way down the Pacific Coast Highway. I know she wasn’t feeling well, but she didn’t complain. Something about her voice made Baby Gray automatically smile and coo. Nobody else had that effect on him.

Somewhere on the Pacific Coast Highway, 1998. Best. Trip. Ever. 

Laughing and having a great time, Pike's Place Market, 1998

Most of all, she was home. I am going to miss games of Chicken Foot (she was sweet but fiercely competitive, and never let her great-grandkids beat her in dominoes). She loved my kids and husband and they loved her. She was kind, she was smart, and she was simply wonderful.