Generations Pass

Nope I did not spell that incorrectly in the title, Generations Pass. My grandmother passed away this past Friday. It was a relief in a way because she had Dementia and has been "gone" for several years. I know that she is in a better place where she is, happy and will remember how much we love her but of course she will always be missed.

She was an amazing woman. I would say a woman before her time. She was very independent. VERY Independent. She was not your cookie baking grandma. She was more the beer run grandma. She had a HUGE beer can collection. Loved Iron City Beer only because it was brewed in Pittsburgh. She was the biggest Steelers fan I know and now that she is in heaven, healthy and in her right mind again I know she is happy that they just won the Super Bowl. Of course when I think of my grandmother, Romayne Phillips, I will always remember her love for the beach which I share. That she drank everything with a straw, like I do. She loved cheese, me too, better than chocolate. She always had Certs or TickTacks, was always humming, I do not know what tune, and she walked at least four - five miles a day, especially if she could walk on the beach. She loved sports, football and baseball and I have known "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" since I was probably old enough to babble the song. I remember my floaty ducky and being in the ocean with her all my summers as a child, floating over the swells. She would say, "Swells are swell" and for someone who could not swim, she was a great floater and always in the water. And of course her trademark was always having a convertible (I must have gotten that vice from her too - I WILL have a convertible again!) There is so much to remember about her, how she loved Charlie Brown, music (Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Opera, all kinds), our walks to Dairy Queen after naps in the afternoon and getting a Mr. Misty Kiss before going back to the beach. She taught us how to make drip castles in the sand. I remember playing for hours in a tidepool one day with her when my brothers started catching blue crabs with my buckets, in the very same tidepool, and we took home - oh, I don't know how many crabs! We cooked them in a big pot in her kitchen. There were so many of them that a couple crawled out of the pot and around the floor. She was always so funny calling the "Blue Bathroom" as we drove up in the driveway in her convertible '62 Nova cause she had to "piddle". I remember everything about her house. There were no toys, other than beach toys, but there was a lot of fun. Everyone called her grandma and she was a grandma to all our friends. She had a great smile and laugh but most of all, she loved the four of us, her grandchildren. No doubt about it we were always top of her priority list and always there with us even though she lived in a different state.

Grandma, I know now you will remember our favorite joke, "What did the big rose say to the little rose? Hi bud!" Everytime I would tell it to you, you would laugh and laugh and hug me. It was not until I was older that I actually got the joke and play on words, I just knew you would laugh and hug me! I love you Grandma! I will grieve for the time my children will not have with you but feel fortunate for the time I did.