Ruth

She came of age during the Depression. She looked like Linda Darnell (Google that name and you'll see how stunningly beautiful Linda Darnell was). She could jitterbug like a professional. She would insert dirty words into the stories she read to her grandchildren to make them giggle. She never went beyond the 5th grade, yet she ran her own business for more than 30 yeares and raised two children mostly as a single mother in an era when single mothers were not the norm. She married an alcoholic and learned to be fully self sufficient for her family. She single-handedly cared for her aging mother for 10 years. She never turned away her grandchildren who were dumped unceremoniously on her doorstep for years. She was sensible and frugal and kind and loving. At the age of 60, she found God and fell madly in love with the her spiritual side she had never entertained. She died 22 years ago today.
Every year my grandmother would call me on my birthday. No matter where I had been dragged to, I always got a phone call. Sometimes a card, sometimes a little money, but always a phone call. My father didn't even call me every year on my birthday, but my grandmother (my mother's mother) would never dream of missing it.
My mother and her mother fought like cats and dogs from moment my mother came out of the womb (after 48 hours of labor!). My mother was like her father. A dreamer, someone who couldn't stay in 1 place, someone who couldn't hold onto money. Everyone always said I was like my grandmother, sensible, down to Earth and no matter where I was being dragged to by my mother, I always knew that my rock and my stability was in a two story house in Piedmont, MO. I can't speak to her strengths as a mother, but as a grandmother, she was wonderful and never failing in her love.
When I was 17, I returned to Missouri for Thanksgiving and she was there, as always. We had some talks and later, I was laying in bed and I could see her, sitting on the couch, watching TV. And I remember thinking how out of touch she seemed, how her opinions and view seemed wrong. It made me sad to feel so disconnected from the woman I had always considered my best friend.
A little over 3 months later, 11 days before I turned 18, she died. Her heart gave out. She was in the hospital less than a week before she died. I was living out of state, but I couldn't bring myself to come back to see her in the hospital. I couldn't bring myself to see her hooked up to tubes and wires.
I realized, after she died, that I was waiting for a phone call. I think, in a way, I still do. It's amazing to me that it's been 22 years. Life goes on and no one understood that more than my grandmother. She would have never wanted anyone to wallow and dwell on the fact that she was gone, but the fact that I graduated high school, went to college, worked, got married, had a child without her...is odd. Like maybe I should have ceased to exist when she did. It just doesn't seem natural, when it's really the most natural thing in the world. But as each year passes and each generation arrives, it feels that the memories of her are growing dimmer. My daughter will have her memories of my mother, who is her best friend and she may remember a few stories I've told her about my grandmother. God willing, someday, there will be at least 1 little one who will remember me as their best friend. This is the cycle of life, exactly the kind of thing my grandmother would have appreciated.