Grandma Berkshire

My grand­ma is one tough cook­ie. She grew up dur­ing The Great Depres­sion, sent a hus­band off to World War II, raised 4 kids and beat lung can­cer. When I was lit­tle she was always a bit more fright­en­ing to me than my grand­pa and I still don’t know exact­ly why, she was only ever real­ly mad at me once, when I care­less­ly tore a chunk out of a tree while mow­ing her yard.

I’d often be over at my grand­par­en­t’s house dur­ing the sum­mer, espe­cial­ly once I was old enough to be allowed to ride my bike the two miles to their place. Lunch was always around 11:15 and din­ner around 4 or so. Grand­ma was­n’t too big on bak­ing or cook­ing like Don­na Reed, but the food was always good and there was always enough to fill up on. I used to put Bugles on each fin­ger and eat them off one by one, or snack on Tater Skins. Some­times when my cousins were vis­it­ing we’d be able to con­vince her to get a box of piz­za rolls for us to share.

After grand­pa died and my par­ents divorced I found myself stuck with the job of being the man of two hous­es. I would walk through the cemetary past my grand­fa­ther’s grave to get to her house. I resent­ed this at first, I was in mid­dle school, start­ing high school and there were plen­ty of oth­er things I would have rather done than clean gut­ters and mow the yard and trim trees at two dif­fer­ent hous­es. I got over this as my grand­ma got old­er and I grew old­er and into the real­iza­tion at just how much I was need­ed. Rel­a­tive­ly, I was­n’t need­ed very much, but it was enough to speak to me. When I went off to col­lege the lit­tle chores would pile up until I came home on a break and I’d hear from my grand­ma how my mom was too busy to both­er often and from my mom how my grand­ma need­ed help so often. [And I’ll get in trou­ble from both of them if they read this].

Grand­ma is near­ly impos­si­ble to beat at scrab­ble and euchre [although she makes an excel­lent part­ner at the lat­ter]. She also kicked cross­word ass when she still did them. A cou­ple of years ago she moved out from the house in Con­nersville and moved to Noblesville in a sort of retire­ment community/assisted liv­ing sort of place, her emphy­se­ma and poor eye­sight make it hard for her to do much. I don’t see her as often as I used to, and I don’t even call as often as I used to. I some­times won­der if she still gets joy from her life and fam­i­ly or if she is just wait­ing.

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