This post has no clever headline

I never really knew either of my grandmothers.

My Dad’s mother passed away before I was born, and my maternal grandmother died when I was about The Boy’s age. The only real memory I have of her is walking over to my grandparents’ house once and giving her something, I suppose it was a drawing, since I did a lot of drawing as a kid.

A couple weeks later she lay down to take a nap and never woke up.

In retrospect, it was weird. I’d never made a call on my grandparents before—my grandfather had suffered a stroke, again before I was born—and their house and him in particular always gave me the creeps. I still wonder what motivated me over there that day, so shortly before she died.

It wasn’t for another 35 years that I would gain another grandmother, when I met and married The Missus and inherited her maternal grandma. I wanted to call her “Grandma,” but she insisted I call her “Dorothy.” It still doesn’t feel right to me.

She was—and is—a frisky old gal. The matriarch of an extremely close family, she lives in a cute little house on a corner lot. One of her daughters lives three doors down, and my wife’s parents live next door to her aunt. Her other daughter lives about a 10-minute drive away.

If my family still lived in that kind of physical proximity to each other, oh my goodness, there would be blood, and lots of it. I’d heard a lot over the years about the existence of non-dysfunctional families, but until I got married, the closest I ever came to one was on TV sitcoms of the ’50s and ’60s. And one Christmas in Maine with my friend Kath’s family, but I never made it back to Maine.

Dorothy is well into her eighties, but is still fit and sharp enough to be actively at the center of every event and occasion. Each Christmas, she’s the MVP, hosting the entire extended gaggle of in-laws and outlaws for homemade, artery-clogging holiday awesomeness and a staggeringly generous amount of gift-giving. Every Fourth of July, she and the whole clan make the trip up to Yosemite and rent a deluxe cabin or several and spend a week hiking the trails, enjoying the river and drinking wine that does not come in a box.

She is the fulcrum of that family.

And she’s become a great friend to me, as well. I am by all accounts one odd duck, and to a lot of people, apparently, I come off as aloof and disinterested, when really I’m just uncomfortable being around all that familial affection. It’s not my background, it’s not my experience. But I’m always comfortable around Dorothy. Maybe it’s because she’s the same age as my own Mom, and I feel at home with members of The Greatest Generation—as long as I’m not directly related to them.

Maybe because she’s just so goddamned cool; we even turned her onto “Lost” and she loved it.

But it’s probably mostly that she is the picture-perfect Grandma, like something out of a Bing Crosby movie from the ’40s. And I had never had that until Dorothy. I didn’t think I ever would.

Now the other shoe drops. All of a sudden, Dorothy has cancer. Lots of it.

That’s the bad, awful news. Mitigating it somewhat (for me, anyhow), is the fact that she has so much of it, she is not expected to have to suffer it for long.

Also in the mitigating column, The Boy has a memory like a steel trap, and I’m confident he will remember this remarkable woman—his great-grandmother—much better, and with more affection, than I remember my own grandmother.

Everything else about it just sucks, though. The thought of Christmases-to-come without her kind, encouraging presence looms like a lead weight tied around my heart. The Missus is going to be devastated; she already is, in anticipation. I cannot overstate how close she is to her Grandma—it was to her house young Missus Bastardson went after school every day as a kid. She is like a second mother to her.

So the Spring Break in SoCal next week that has long been in the works for The Missus and The Boy has turned into a dark, forbidding rite of passage that will somehow have to be endured. Smiles will be forced. Tears will be choked back. Sadness will reign.

I’m even flying down for the first couple of days. Dorothy still feels okay and I don’t want to miss this opportunity to spend what may be my last quality time with the only Grandmother I ever knew well enough to love.

. . .

Roseanne Cash wrote a song for her father toward the end of his life, and with their permission, I will close with it here.

September When It Comes

There's a cross above the baby's bed,

A Savior in her dreams.

But she was not delivered then,

And the baby became me.

There's a light inside the darkened room,

A footstep on the stair.

A door that I forever close,

To leave those memories there.

So when the shadows link them,

Into an evening sun.

Well first there's summer, then I'll let you in.

September when it comes.

I plan to crawl outside these walls,

Close my eyes and see.

And fall into the heart and arms,

Of those who wait for me.

I cannot move a mountain now;

I can no longer run.

I cannot be who I was then:

In a way, I never was.

I watch the clouds go sailing;

I watch the clock and sun.

Oh, I watch myself, depending on,

September when it comes.

So when the shadows link them,

And burn away the clouds.

They will fly me, like an angel,

To a place where I can rest.

When this begins, I'll let you know,

September when it comes.