Sure, my life isn't perfect, but I am very blessed. Looking around I saw my cousins, my aunts, my uncle, my great aunts, my great uncles and my second cousins. All happy, all comfortable. What an amazing thing, so many people who see each other in different intervals throughout the year all gathering in one place every year. All talking and laughing like we all live together, like we're all one big happy family.
As my gaze ran across the room, over the smiles, past the jokes, through the fake dirty looks from someone's joke, my eyes stopped on my grandmother. There she was, sitting in her chair in the center of it all, mostly just taking it in. She'd look up to say "you're welcome" for giving way more gifts than had been discussed and agreed upon. Her face would light up as we openned them. She was surrounded by her family and she was happy.
That's what hit me. It was her family. Her parents came over here from Ireland when they were pregnant with her. Her parents both worked 2 or 3 jobs and never owned a house. She worked 2 jobs while in school and never complained. She grew up to be a Boston public school teacher. An Irish American school teacher who worked in Roxbury during bussing.
Despite all of the amazing things her remarkable life, I realized I was looking at her biggest accomplishment right in front of me. It hit me that the most important thing to her and really the most impressive thing to me was the family she created. The love she created. With the exception of great aunts and second cousins (whose presence still showed how much her family meant to her), none of us sitting in this living room enjoying Christmas day would exist without her. And our mere existance was just the beginning of what she created. The love that was in the air, the happiness of all of her family, the loyalty and the kindness was all a reflection of a strong, caring, selfless woman.
She raised 5 kids, 7 grandchildren, bought a beautiful house in West Roxbury and smiled the whole time. All 5 kids went on to be successful and still she managed to find a way to help them at every turn. She married a wonderful man and had a very loving marriage right up until the day her passed, 12 years ago.
She took me in only two years later when I finished high school and decided to go to school in Boston. There was never a second thought, she actually suggested it. It would make things easier and more affordable for me to live with her, so why would we even question it? That was her attitude and it was genuine. She would tell you that every time you asked but the thing is, she would mean it every time. Even after a few years of coming home late and being too loud, of never keeping my room clean and all the other things I took for granted that I now feel guilty for, she would still mean it 100%. After I had moved out, after 5 years of dealing with and taking care of me, she would often tell my mother that she missed me. Whether she missed cleaning up after me or doing my laundry I'm not sure, but I was sure she meant it. Family was what mattered most to her and to her, that wasn't just a concept. It was how she felt.
Living with grandma taught me a lot of things. I learned a lot about who I was, who she was, where we both came from. I was very lucky to have those dinner conversations about her parents, about her and her sisters when they were young, about how my grandparents met and of course, about her uncle who was in the IRA, haha. This Christmas that I am describing was a few years into living with grandma and maybe some of these other experiences and conversations were what helped put things into perspective. I began to notice how every piece of news in the family came through grandma. All her children called multiple times a week if not every day. Every piece of news and every big decision went through 11 Rutledge Street. It was like living at a command center. Grandma had 7 grandchildren, most of whom were all grown up, and still she had such a big influence in every one of her children and grandchildren's lives.
I'll never forget when grandpa died. I'll never forget absolutely losing it at the wake, not being able to stop crying and I'll never forget grandma there comforting me. All I could think was "here is the woman who spent almost 50 years with this man and she is making sure I am OK". I remember at funeral home just before the funeral, when we were paying our last respects. I was second to last in front of grandma and when I kneeled down there, I couldn't get up. I couldn't stop crying and I knew I needed to get up and let grandma say goodbye. I remember my mother coming over to get me and grandma stepping in before her. I remember grandma kneeling down next to me and looping her arm through mine and holding me close as she prayed and said goodbye to her husband. I will always feel guilty about that, that I never gave her the chance to say goodbye by herself, but I will also always know that she never minded. That she wanted to comfort me and that she was happy to be able to.
The strength she has is absolutley amazing and obvious to everyone who knows her. It's obvious to anyone who knows her children or grandchildren because she has given it to us, along with the love and loyalty that I saw all around that room.
And that's how I came to realize that despite all of the amazing accomplishments in this woman's life, that we were her greatest accomplishment and that we were what she was most proud of. She had created this love that surrounded me on that day and I began to realize that she had created the love that surrounds me every day of my life.
After years of battling cancer and assorted other ailments, it looks like it is finally too much. I just left her house tonight and as she lay there sleeping, unable to get up for the past week and half, I tried to make myself remember the good times. I tried to think of all the happy memories I've had and I realized that while of course there were moments here and there that stuck out, I had a continuous happy memory of her. I could look back at my whole life and remember her happily because I was lucky enough to always have her be a part of it.
Grandma taught me a lot of things, way too many to list. But what she gave me was love, strength, loyalty and not only happiness, but the knowledge to know what true happiness is.
