That Was My Grandmother

It Took Me a While to Pull My Thoughts Together

Back on April 27th, my maternal grandmother passed away. I hadn’t seen her in about a year and a half, and when I had seen her last, she wasn’t doing well — something not surprising, considering that she died just shy of her 95th birthday on May 2nd.

I reshared the obituary my mother wrote, but at the time, promised that I would write something a little more personal soon. I expected it to be sooner than this, since I wanted to celebrate her 95th birthday, but it took me some time to gather some coherent thoughts.

Betty Jean Dulaney Lowe (Grandma Lowe) has been living with my mother, first in the Syracuse area and later in Harrisburg, for about 25 years. My grandfather passed away in 1999, and not long after, Grandma decided she would rather live with family than try to take care of their house, which was both large and remote.

Remember the Santa Claus story? It was out in that neck of the woods. I mostly remember that house as being a fun place to visit, although the extra 15 minutes to drive to Pompey (as opposed to the more suburban Jamesville where my other grandparents were) seemed like an eternity to a kid who had been sitting in the car for half an hour already.

They had a pool, which made it kind of our default summer destination, and we didn’t realize until years later the extent to which my grandfather (former store owner, fire chief, and Santa Claus) was a local hero.

Grandma was, in my experience, always the kind of quiet, steadfast wife you associate with couples of their generation. She was, however, very capable of being wickedly funny, often by playing off those expectations.

Grandma Lowe with my cousin Krista and me, circa 1984 or 1985.

In the time between my grandfather’s death and Grandma’s decision to move in with my mom, I moved into the house in Pompey for a while. I actually worked at the Pompey Mall, and helped my grandmother with the lawn and trying to manage the hoard of possessions that had built up over decades.

Bear in mind that, in addition to being generally pretty quiet and slow to anger, I’m not sure I heard my grandmother say almost anything about politics for years. That would change a bit later in life, especially as more of her circle became filled with evangelical Christians, but she was so quiet about this stuff, that I remember a particular event very specifically.

I was vacuuming in the living room and, it being 2001 or so, did not have a smartphone. I was playing a CD on the stereo in the living room, loud enough that I could hear it while cleaning, when she came home.

I was listening, specifically, to a live version of Phil Ochs’s song “The Ringing of Revolution.” In this particular recording, he sets up a hypothetical movie adaptation of the tune. In the introduction, Ochs suggests a number of ironic choices, culminating with “John Wayne plays Lyndon Johnson…and Lyndon Johnson plays God.”

My grandmother walked in, right on cue like a sitcom, and said “…and that he did!” And then just kept moving along, either unaware of how funny that was, or fully aware and hoping to maximize impact.

(And, yes, this piece is titled with a nod to an Ochs song. Titles are hard.)

She was very good at subverting expectations like that. Grandma not only tolerated my love of the early Kevin Smith movies, but could identify Jay and Silent Bob on sight and thought they were funny. If you haven’t seen those characters in action, they are…not her type of humor.

These are the kinds of moments that stick with me. My grandmother was unfailingly kind and loving for the entire time I knew her; she adored her grandkids, her never-ending parade of pets, and she mourned my beloved grandfather for the rest of her life. Those things are what define her to most people — and certainly they are foundational to her identity — but to me, I think of her buried in the quiet moments we would have when we were alone together in that house in Pompey.

I remember her coming running into the kitchen in a panic once, when I helped myself to a slice of pie on the counter. I thought it was cheesecake, but it turned out to be key lime pie…something I had never actually tried before. I immediately spit it out and started to gag. The pie was fine — although it was a victim of Grandma’s habit of leaving literally everything out at room temperature, a trait I have inherited, much to my wife’s chagrin. The issue was that when you expect a sweet dairy treat, and what you get is sour, you think it’s sour. Grandma laughed at me for longer than I think I’d ever seen her laugh when she figured out what the commotion was.

I saw Grandma less after I started having kids, particularly since right around that time, she and Mom moved to Harrisburg. It isn’t that far a drive, but undertaking it with three kids in the car and budgeting for a trip like that isn’t as easy as it was when they were an hour away.

The last “big” thing that we did together was, though, pretty big. In 2009, Grandma decided that she wanted to take a cruise around Alaska. As I recall it, my grandfather always wanted to, but Grandma always put it off because she was working, and Alaska sounded really cold and wet. It was, but it was also a blast.

We got hundreds of great photos, almost none of which I can seem to find right now, and saw some of the coolest and most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. We also got to spend a lot of one-on-one time together, which at the time I hadn’t really done in almost ten years.

She had a little melancholy from time to time, thinking about how she wished she had done the trip with my grandfather. But I remember distinctly bringing one thing to the table — literally! — that she really enjoyed.

I had been single not long before the Alaska trip, and had had a single date with a lovely girl who moved to Ketchikan, Alaska almost immediately after.

I have that effect on women, sometimes.

We were on good terms, and when Grandma and I passed through Ketchikan, I asked if my friend wanted to meet her. My friend did me one better, setting up a private “captain’s table” experience at the seafood restaurant where her brother worked. Said brother walked us through everything, gave us a lovely little illustrated guide to everything that we had eaten (complete with a history of the courses and their importance to both First Nations and American Alaskans). It was wonderful, and we were able to bring a couple with us who had befriended Grandma on the cruise.

It was one of those moments where we did something only I — actually, only my much cooler friend — could have done. Grandma loved it, and it was the ship’s first port of call, so it kicked everything off to a great start. That night we went to a formal dinner thing that they had on the ship, and there’s a photo of the two of us dressed up for it that still hangs on my kitchen wall.

On one of our last ports of call, a bus driver pulled us off the regular course to show us a secluded spot, located behind a small church, which she said was the most beautiful place in Alaska. The photo I took, seen below, doesn’t remotely do it justice, but the gray of the sky, about to open up, certainly lends it a kind of eerie feel.

In my mind, that’s where Jim and Betty are now. My grandparents, free of Earthly encumbrances and responsibilities, enjoying this view on the cruise my grandfather never got to enjoy.