A Century of Goodbyes

 

When I visited my last remaining grandparent this summer, she asked if I knew she turned 100. “Yes,” I said, speaking loudly so she could hear, “that’s so great!” “No, not really,” she replied quietly. “I’m tired, Jon. I’m ready.”

A sad moment, but I understood. Elma Aliina Teppo was born a month after Charlie Chaplin’s film debut. Three months before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. She survived both world wars and a cold war, the Great Depression and several not-so-great ones. Two spouses, five kids and countless grandkids. A life well lived. But her friends and siblings had been gone for several years. It had been a century of goodbyes, and she was ready.

Grandma was energetic, vital and fiercely independent well into her nineties, but the last year had taken its toll. Her hearing had become too poor to chat on the telephone and her sight too poor to read her beloved books. Of course, she had read nearly every book in the Sault Ste. Marie public library, but would have liked to re-read a few. Then a couple of serious falls finally convinced her to move into an assisted living facility three months ago.

“I don’t understand why God isn’t ready for me,” she told my sister on her last visit. But Grandma cherished visits from family and from her Lutheran pastor who offered prayer and communion.

She must have thought her rest would come after a stroke two weeks ago. But five days later she woke up and said, “Dr. Mackie? Oh, no… am I still here?!” This Dr. Mackie was the third generation of Dr. Mackie who had cared for her.

My grandma, or mummo in Finnish, then informed him she was going to go soon whether God was ready or not. The next day she took a turn for the worse; Dr. Mackie III said she “willed herself away.” But the hospice nurses said her vitals were much stronger than they should be. Just like her daughter (my mom) in her prolonged fight with cancer.

It was about a week before she passed and every time her pastor prayed over her, the beating of her heart spiked and her blood pressure rose. They said they’d never seen anything like it.

Elma Aliina Teppo, 1914-2014. Lepää rauhassa.

(I’ve been offered more condolences on social media than I can count, and I am deeply thankful. But I’d love to read a remembrance of one of your grandparents in the comments.)

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  1. Last Outpost on the Right Inactive
    Last Outpost on the Right
    @LastOutpostontheRight

    My grandfather lived 94 years, having moved from Puerto Rico to Maryland in the early 70’s, so that he and abuela could be near their children. He lived to see the fourth of his namesakes born, and the photo of four generations sitting on a couch is a cherished memory.

    He was a character, like many old men who had seen two world wars, and countless other life-changing events. And in that wonderful character were pearls of wisdom, delivered in Spanish because they just aren’t that funny in English. My favorite:

    el carne del burro no es transparente.

    I’ll leave the translation to others, but let’s just say that I heard it most frequently when I was standing in front of the TV during a baseball game.  :-)

    José

    • #1
  2. user_10225 Member
    user_10225
    @JohnDavey

    Jon, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m the fifth of seven kids, both of my father’s parents died before I was born – in fact my dad was #9 of 10, and his mother passed when my uncle (#10) was born.

    My mom’s dad passed a few short years before I made my arrival. Mom’s mother passed when I was 8. So I never really *knew* my grandparents. But we did have Mrs. B.

    Emma Burton was a widow who had the unfortunate luck of having the loud Davey clan purchase the house next door. In the the following years she became in essence a grandmother to all seven of us. Including to my older siblings’ children as they arrived.

    Mom sold the house in 1990, but continued to go and provide some in-home care to Mrs. B, who by then was in too much decline to maintain her expansive well tended garden, and rambling two story home. She purchased a smaller place, a bit further away. She still maintained two toy chests for whenever one of popped in to visit, even if we were far too old for toys by then. My closest friends even considered her another grandmother. She was well read, with a huge swath of divergent interests, but foremost for her were her adopted grandkids. Mrs. B passed a while after that – always in full control of her faculties to the very last, even if her balance and hearing had turned from her. I miss her to this day.

    I can only have a small sense of the loss your family is enduring today. Prayers for comfort and Grace are offered to your family, and all that cared for this grand lady.

    • #2
  3. karon@karonadams.com Inactive
    karon@karonadams.com
    @KaronAdams

    Jon, that was lovely.  I want to say more but I can’t bring it all together just now. how beautiful for your Mummo. Merry Christmas, Jon, Mummo is surely proud.

    • #3
  4. HeartofAmerica Inactive
    HeartofAmerica
    @HeartofAmerica

    First of all, my condolences. It’s hard to lose family and especially during the holidays.

    My Grandma Bea, my fraternal grandmother, has been gone since ’93 and there isn’t a day that I don’t think about her. I am still mad that I was unable to have one last talk with her before she died unexpectedly. In fact, both of my grandmothers died within six weeks of one another. It was a tough Spring.

    Grandma Bea never had an easy life. She grew up poor in east Texas, married a wildcatter during the Depression who fathered three children but never managed to stay around to take care of the family. It was left to my Grandma to keep the family together no matter what. She never had a formal education and probably never went past the sixth grade but she had a big heart and lots of love for her family.

    When her daughter, my aunt, married a young soldier from Missouri, she moved the rest of her family to be near her (my poor uncle probably never knew he was getting ALL of the family too). She worked numerous low paying jobs well into her sixties, but never complained.

    She was always so proud of her family and their accomplishments, accomplishments that she never could achieve herself. Little did she know that we were her greatest accomplishment. She raised fine children who became responsible adults who, in turn, raised fine children who carried on the tradition. Although she never saw it, I became the first girl (on both sides of my family) to graduate from college. She would have been more excited than me.

    One day we will be together again.

    • #4
  5. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    Jon Gabriel, Ed.: Elma Aliina Teppo, 1914-2014. Lepää rauhassa.

    Bless your Mummo, and all those who loved her, and made memories with her.

    My maternal grandparents always opened their hearts, home and lives to us grandchildren. The lot of us, from their own four children, cycled through, sometimes two at a time staying over night on Saturdays. Sunday Church, then family dinner…big dinner. There was always quiet reading, a board game, or listening to music. No television watched–there wasn’t one in the house.

    They were part financiers and cheerleaders of my pursuit of music. Always at recitals, they paid for music camp, and let me live with them to take lessons far from home. I lived with them during college breaks and summers. We never really talked about it, but they were set on letting nothing get in the way of my opportunity.

    My paternal Grandmother raised her three children alone. She never talked much, and lived a hard life. I didn’t really know her well, but she was a fixture and contributor to my life. I would meet her every afternoon at the train station, and we’d walk home together. We lived in a very large house that had been turned into four apartment units. She lived upstairs, we lived downstairs. She made an old-fashioned fruit-cake, which we still make to this day, but only because I helped her make it and learned the tricks of the recipe.

    • #5
  6. She Member
    She
    @She

    A lovely tribute to your beloved grandmother.  I’m not sure they make ’em like that any more.

    Today, I received my first email from my 91-year old Aunt (dad’s sister).  She moved into a ‘retirement home’ last year, and has been taking computer classes.  She’ll get every bit out of life before she goes, too.

    I never knew my father’s parents, who died within a few months of each other, just before, and just after, I was born.  Grandpa managed the equitable distribution of rations for the English Midlands during the Second World War, and had a nervous breakdown over it.  Grandma was alleged to have been the first person in Birmingham to go out bicycling in a pair of bloomers.  She also hosted weekly knitting parties (socks and mufflers for the servicemen), and fed tea and crumpets to the arriving and departing troops at the train station.

    My mother’s parents were far different.  One, a staunch Methodist, the other Church of England.  A bit stiff and formal.   Grandpa always with a chocolate in his pocket and a marvelous piano and organ player, and Granny a lover of tea and biscuits.  And cricket.  They both loved cricket.

    We traveled a lot when I was young, and Granny and Grandpa were an ever-fixed mark of my existence.  Safe and comforting to be around.

    • #6
  7. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Grandma Mary and Grandpa Yule (Is anyone ever named Mary or Yule anymore?) are My Mom’s Grandparents.

    Every Sunday everyone was at Their Home to watch the Dallas Cowboys, every game day: Me, Mom, brothers, Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, usually some Friends. Scores of Us. Potluck. A spread of food as far as the eye could see. There were the adult tables and the kids’ tables.

    They had a separate fridge in the garage just for the occasion. The fridge being full of all the drinks all the grandkids enjoyed and the freezer full of ice cream set at just the Right temperature that They could scoop it out without breaking a wrist. Being children of the Depression They saved everything. If You left a soda can out with some still left, They would cover it with aluminum foil with a rubber band around it and write Yer name on it. Come next Sunday They would welcome You at the door with that very can. One time there was line of nineteen of Us for the bathroom to pour ’em out (without Them knowing, of course).

    Halftime was football in the street. Picking sides (I was always chosen last and My team always got spotted points for having Me). Establishing endzones (Johnson’s mailbox to the front bumper of the Vega). “CAR!!” And We’d part like the Red Sea.

    Good times…. good times.

    Thanks for the invite, Jon, down memory lane….

    • #7
  8. raycon and lindacon Inactive
    raycon and lindacon
    @rayconandlindacon

    Sorry for your loss, Jon:  My mother turned 99 in August.  Like your Mummo, she was just plain tired and wanted to leave this life.  We had many years of spirited conversation from mom, who was amazingly well read and knowledgeable for someone with an 8th grade education and no other formal learning opportunities.

    There is a hole in our lives now.  I am in my seventies, and Linda not far behind.  How long before we can pick up those conversations we never finished?

    • #8
  9. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Thanks for sharing your moving account of your grandmother’s life, passing and character. I did not have much a chance to know but one of my grandparents. My paternal grandfather, who had been the village atheist,  died in a mental hospital a decade before I was born. I do remember my mother’s mother, but only just. She died of throat cancer when I was very young, and one of my earliest memories is of my aunt and cousin, both nurses, conspiring to sneak my little brother and me into the hospital to see her one last time, very much against  the doctor’s orders and hospital rules.  My paternal grandmother did live long enough  for me to know, and I credit her with my abiding love of words. The last, my maternal  grandfather, well, he very much shaped my life. It was from him, Onkel Fritz, Onkel  Gerald and Onkel Willi that I first heard German. He passed just one week short of his 90th birthday, just as he and I were starting to converse in his native language. He had been a barber for many years. When we visit Indiana, I still run into people who remember getting their first  haircuts from him.

    • #9
  10. user_1938 Inactive
    user_1938
    @AaronMiller

    Three of my grandparents died before I was old enough to have adult conversations with them. My remaining grandmas (one grandpa remarried) passed last year. So I have scattered memories of most of them, and a lot of memories of Grandma Miller whom I watched after.

    Grandpa Foos used to put us in the back of his pickup, which played “Dixie” when he hit the horn (as he did every time we pulled in the driveway). He was always smiling and playing. He never knew a stranger. Once, he showed up with little black bear folded in his arms, making the puppet move for our wide-eyed fascination.

    He was resourceful. When he saw a snapping turtle crossing the road one day, he brought it home for turtle soup. In his younger years, he had done everything from building roads to selling vacuums door-to-door. When I knew him, he was still picking shrapnel out of his skin. He was a tank commander under Patton in North Africa, where he earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. When the medics found him, they passed on because they knew he would live. His funeral was my first. I remember putting something into his pocket, but can’t remember what.

    Grandma Foos lived in a tiny town near Atlanta called Ellaville (about 1600 residents in 2000). It’s because of that house that I can’t think of anyone with a house as poor; we didn’t need much. She was a stern woman, a former English teacher, who ensured we learn how to be gentlemen and ladies. But she loved to watch us kids play. We spent hours doing nothing but swatting wiffle balls in the neighboring orchard or playing Carroms in the smoldering attic.

    I remember little of Grandpa Miller before he got Alzheimer’s. He loved puzzles. He would spend hours putting together giant jigsaws with us. The rest of the time, he would relax and read or finish crosswords with the ocean in sight. He and Grandma built a beach house just a quarter mile from a now-famous bar, and that became my family’s home away from home. Every summer, relatives, friends, and neighbors gathered to enjoy the perfect crystal sand together. It’s why my cousins are like brothers and sisters.

    Grandpa Miller taught us to make ice cream, pick the best watermelons, to shuck corn and crack pecans. But he preferred to sit on the porch as we fished and swam and dug a fort underneath the overturned rowboat. It was only after he died that I learned his role in the war: a sort of trader for the Army in India.

    Grandma Miller (whom one fellow Ricochet member met while I was caretaker) lost both her parents before she was seven years old. She grew up on her uncle’s farm in Florida. But you wouldn’t know it from her genteel personality. The combination of her height (under 5-foot), manners, and kindness instantly endeared her to strangers. Though originally Baptist, she was converted to Catholicism by an Irish priest who became her best friend and who later baptized half of her grandchildren.

    It was with her money, from years working for the Corps of Engineers, that they purchased the beach property. She helped to run Grandpa’s corner store, but like most small businesses they were lucky to break even. Like Grandpa, she loved Perdido Key but preferred to admire it from the balcony. In her final years, she loved nothing more than to tend to her garden and to talk with her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

    “Nanny Rose”, Grandpa Foos’s wife in old age, was Grandma Miller’s best friend in the end. It was only after she died that I learned she was originally Canadian. I knew her least, but will always remember her soft-spoken kindness.

    That generation was certainly a blessing.

    • #10
  11. virgil15marlow@yahoo.com Coolidge
    virgil15marlow@yahoo.com
    @Manny

    May she be with God now.  From what you say she lived a blessed life, and you were blessed to have been with her for so long.  Eternal rest grant on to her, O Lord.

    • #11
  12. Jon Gabriel, Ed. Contributor
    Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    @jon

    Thanks for sharing the rememberances, all. And Merry Christmas!

    • #12
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