You'll See

I miss my madcap grandmother. She made me crazy in a lot of ways but she never failed to make me laugh.

My mother was always trying to get her out of the house. Once we went to lunch and an over-attentive waiter kept bringing us unneeded soft drink refills. At one point, there were at least 12 Diet Cokes, Cherry Cokes and regular Cokes on the table. My mom said to me, "He's flirting with you." My grandmother replied, "No, he's flirting with me." She was probably right.

Her life was not easy and she made some poor choices. Luckily, she had three daughters who took care of her to the bitter end. I'm not making fun of old age, illness or dementia. I was a coward who ran the other way. Then God tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Here are your in-laws and they are going to live with you."

Zany ol' grandma believed that people were regularly breaking into her apartment to do madcap things like dent her coffee cart or move pillows around. When ANY of us would doubt her, she would say, "You'll see."

She lived for her trashy magazines. Heaven forbid that it was a holiday week and they might come out one day late. My mom tried to explain it to her but she would just nod her head and say, "You'll see." She kept a death calendar of all the famous people who perished. When there were only two, she would say to us, "Another one comes tomorrow -- you'll see."

She used to always tell us we would find her dead one day. Those crazy people were going to do her in. She was sure of it. We all blew off these comments. Her constant mantra was, "You'll see." One night/morning, she died in her sleep. We all rushed to the apartment and waited for the proper officials. Through our tears, somebody said, "You'll see" and we all cracked up laughing ... just for a minute.