During my trip back home last year, we went to Pennsylvania to visit my grandma and to see that area of the state that was my home for the first year or two of my life. At that time grandma was living independently in an apartment so we stayed with her for our five day visit. After spending our first week of visiting in the oven that is Texas, it was nice to be in Pennsylvania with its milder temperatures.

During our visit, we spent a lot of time driving around to family landmarks and visiting some extended family. I saw the location where the hospital where I was born once stood. More interesting was going down the back streets of the town to see the first house where I lived. It doesn’t really look that different to when we lived there. Just a bit older and maybe overgrown a little. I remember we used to make a traditional visit to these places each summer when we made the trip from Georgia to Pennsylvania. Except that the hospital was still standing until I was probably in my teens. I have a vague memory of it, looking a bit like a dilapidated old house.

We drove over to Grandma’s old house, where we stayed most summers. It now belongs to my aunt who lives there with her husband. Unfortunately my aunt wasn’t home at the time so I never got to see what it looks like now. It’s a small house with just two bedrooms but somehow we used to manage to fit my grandparents, my two aunts along with the five of us in for a week at a time. Most summers there was a family picnic at the house on the 4th of July. There was the picnic during the day and at night most of the men would play poker down in the basement. The women would play cars up in the kitchen. Cigarette smoke was everywhere because just about everyone in the family smoked. Big chests of ice filled with beer bottles soon became empty beer bottles filling the bins. Kids would run around inside and out playing and sometimes watching the adults. This was often the time I’d see most of my cousins…or should I say second cousins who just happened to be closer to my age than my mom. I also remember seeing the amazing game Pong, for the first time at this house. I’m going to assume it was for the benefit of my aunts still living at home. Later there was the Atari console with the many cartridges. I remember one year when my aunt spent hours playing a single game of Pacman and collecting some crazy high score. When my grandparents first lived there, there was nothing behind the house, just a hill filled with wild strawberries that grandma would turn into jam each year.

I think it must have been our second last day there where Grandma took us out to eat at a little diner called Deb’s Place. I think the place has been there forever but I don’t recall ever being there. The food was pretty typical diner food that wasn’t bad but not great either. It did provide a break from cooking that night and it was kind of neat to go to what apparently was a popular hangout for the locals. Once dinner was over, we had dessert at the ice cream place that is part of the diner. Ice cream is served at a window and eaten at tables out by the parking lot. After making our decisions, Lego Lover and I placed our orders and we waited. What I didn’t notice very well was the anticipation of both my mom and grandma. When the ice cream cones came out, we nearly fell down in shock as they were enormous. I think I ordered a double scoop and it honestly looked like three or four scoops. Lego Lover was similarly amazed and impressed. Both Mom and Grandma were rolling with laughter. It was quite a sight to see. As there was no place to sit at this point, we got back into the car and started to leave. But I had the misfortune to lose the top scoop from my cone which fell off and went rolling down my blouse and leaving streaks of some chocolatey ice cream in its place. This was a brand new top that I don’t think I’d ever worn before. And it was a bit stained after that although it eventually did come out. Despite my mishap, this was my fondest memory of my stay last year.

When we weren’t driving around the area, we were hanging out at Grandma’s apartment and talking and watching tv.  Eventually we got to what had always been my favorite part of visits: photo albums. I particularly liked the older photos and the stories about the people in them. Mostly the people were family from before my time along with some close friends and even a couple old boyfriends of my grandmother. Grandma would sleep in her recliner chair as she didn’t sleep well in her bed. It was a big, fancy chair that quite possibly was as comfortable or more so than many beds. Most nights she fell asleep while watching tv. Most of the time this happened while watching four episodes of Golden Girls late each night.

There was a lot more to that short visit but I won’t go into that now except to say that much of it was quite memorable for many different reasons. At the end of the visit, it was with a heavy heart that we parted to travel back to Texas. The only regret is that despite taking heaps of photos there, I didn’t get one of me with my grandma.

Earlier this year, my grandmother’s health began to decline rapidly and she had to be moved into a nursing home a few months ago. At the end of last month, she celebrated her 90th birthday with a small family gathering at the nursing home. Mom managed to scrape enough money to be there for the special occasion. Soon after the doctor discovered a severe foot infection which couldn’t be cured with medication. The only option was amputation but Grandma wouldn’t have made it through surgery. So the last few weeks have been a waiting game. This afternoon, I got a message from my mom that the wait was over.

Grandma’s life wasn’t any kind of life to live at the end, with others having to meet most of her basic needs. So I am relieved the end has finally come. Obviously that doesn’t take away the sadness of the loss and there is still a bit of the shock of it really being the end. And there’s also the unreality of it for me, being so removed from family. I think I might spend part of tomorrow getting back to work on all the photos I took during last years visit and finally finish that off.