My maternal grandmother passed away last night. She was in her mid-80s and had been in a lot of pain, so I’m not as sad as I thought I’d be. She had a long life and had at least three great-grandchildren, thanks to her eight children and over a dozen grandchildren. It’s not a bad way to leave the living, with plenty of family to remember you by and nary a care about zero population growth.

She wasn’t a typical grandmother—not the sort to bake cookies and pinch cheeks, anyway. I remember her cooking for us kids, though. The parents would all be at work, and she’d babysit me, my sister, and my cousins. Not the best of cooks, she’d make pretty basic food—fried rice with chunks of hot dog and tons of MSG. Goodness, she nearly killed us with all that MSG. Sometimes it was all I could taste. As a young wife and mother who supported the family as a schoolteacher, she had let her husband do all the cooking, so she probably never learned about subtlety in cuisine.

She read to us from the Bible. I remember falling right to sleep in the middle of the day as she read from the good book, my brain shutting down and my mouth drooling spit. She was a devout Mormon who just couldn’t say enough good things about the church—how they were so rich, so generous, so giving, so good about keeping records of geneology, etc. She brought me to the temple once and had me attend one of the Sunday classes with the other kids. I was under the impression that this was just a one-time visit, but I didn’t know how long the visit would last. I thought the service was long enough, but now there was this class, too, and I was so incredibly bored and intimidated.

The teacher then asked me if I planned to stay, and I thought to myself: I don’t have a ride home, so I guess I’m leaving the same time as my grandmother, but I don’t know how much longer she needs to be wherever she is in the temple right now, and I don’t want to be kicked out early. And I said, “Yes, I’m staying.”

My grandmother never explained things to me, so I had no idea that to a Mormon Sunday school teacher, my answer meant, “I am now a Mormon, thank you, and I plan to come to the service and this class every Sunday for the rest of my life, and even long after that, if possible, yes, yes, yes!”

The teacher then called me at home every Sunday after that, wondering why I wasn’t there. I was not even a teenager, and for the first time, I knew what it was to be stalked.

My grandmother made her own clothes, her own underwear, and her own bags and purses. All of it by hand. All of it using whatever scraps were around, however uncoordinated each piece of cloth were to the others. She was so very proud of her work, she used everything she made. I think everyone in the family, at one point or another, tried to get her to wear something store bought and better made, especially on special occasions, but it took a lot of constant effort. She always wanted to wear her own creations, and more often than not, she did. Even the dress she wanted to be buried in is something she made herself.

She also loved to talk about the state of her health. Some of my more vivid memories of her involve a conversation about a uterus falling out. I don’t think I had ever been more shocked or more appalled, as I had never before even heard of such a thing. And it was unfortunately compounded by further descriptions of the pain and of her methods of applying a medicine that I don’t think was even properly prescribed. But I was young. I could have imagined this all. English was her second language, so maybe I just completely misunderstood the description of her health. The emotional scarring, however, remains.

I once tried to get her to record an oral history for me, for my family tree, for posterity. I got myself a mini-tape recorder, and like the guy who collected the personal histories of everyone who survived the Titanic, I sat down with her and had her tell me about her family and her youth. I couldn’t quite direct her, couldn’t quite get her to stay focused on one thing at a time. Granted, I am no Charlie Rose, but I didn’t think it would be so hard to keep her talking about herself, and not so much about the Mormon church. “We’re supposed to be talking about you, Lola. This is not about the church.”

Yeah, that’s my maternal grandmother. I take mostly after my father’s family, really.

But for her all quirks, I loved her. She meant well. And I’m glad she’s no longer in pain. She loved easily, laughed easily, and forgave easily. In all the time I’d known her, I saw her yell just once, and it was to defend her favorite son to all her other children … because she loved him unconditionally. Completely unconditionally. She was absentminded and not quite all there, but quite comfortable with that all the same, laughed at herself when she forgot something or got confused.

I missed her last birthday … because I was packing for the Australia trip. Oddly enough, though, I don’t have any regrets. I think I much prefer my memory of what she looked liked the last time I saw her. She wasn’t very happy or very well in the final days.

I hope she’s happy now, though, and I hope she’s where she wanted to be. She had so much faith in her religion, she deserves that much at least.

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