Goodbye, Grandma

This Memorial Day weekend, we buried my beloved grandmother. Needless to say, there was a lot of memorializing going on. My grandma was a strong and opinionated woman, especially considering that she was born before women were even allowed to vote in the U.S. But since she spent her childhood wandering from country to country with her family after being forced to flee Marash, Turkey (historic Armenia) as a result of the Armenian Genocide, the inequality of women was the least of her concerns. She was too busy trying to stay alive.

My gorgeous grandma with her three sons
at her 100th birthday party 

My grandmother was warm, generous, and vivacious. She would do anything for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She loved to laugh and have fun. She was a great cook who also loved to eat, and she was always trying to feed us. "EAT! EAT!" was the soundtrack of my childhood.

She was also extremely stylish, took great care of herself, and was concerned about her appearance. Up until the very end, whenever she posed for a photo, she would make sure to take her glasses off for the picture. She got her hair done every week, her nails were always painted, and she never went out without putting on makeup and jewelry first--all this when she was ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD.

She was a force to be reckoned with.

Just as she was concerned about her own appearance, so too did she feel that others should put some effort into how they looked. She was not a fan of sloppiness. Even during the last few years of her life, when her eyesight was failing, she would somehow still notice what I was wearing. If I happened not to have any lipstick on, sure enough I'd hear about it: "Honey, why don't you put on a little lipstick? It looks so nice." She was almost blind yet she could tell I wasn't wearing lipstick from across the room? Hmm...I never quite figured that one out.

Even in her late 90s, my grandma was still willing to get
down on the floor to play with her great-grandchildren.

Whenever I knew that I was going to see my grandmother, I would put extra thought into my outfit. So on Thursday, as I was packing and getting dressed for the trip up to Massachusetts for the wake and funeral, I chose what I was going to wear carefully. I wanted to pay my respects to my dear grandma by looking the way she would have wanted me to look.

(I wish I could believe that she was watching us from above, but I don't--not really. It's a nice thought, though, and who knows.... So I made sure to look nice just in case.)

And you can bet that I most definitely wore lipstick.

Grandma, you are still in my head...and you will always be in my heart. Forever.

I miss you.