GRAM'S STUFFED PEPPERS AND CHEERIOS: SAYING "GOODBYE"

Gram about age 15

For the second time in one year and 4 months, I am facing the pain of loosing someone that I loved so much, my Gram.  How do I sum up the life my Gram lived that was so full and also sometimes painful and challenging.  My Gram was an awesome lady with so much strength and the ability to handle extremely stressful events.  I have written some posts on this blog here and here, about myself and my Gram and how I discovered that we were both artists at heart. 

    

I want to share this story with you about my relationship with my Gram and how we bonded over many years.

One day about 2 1/2 months ago and after my Gram became very ill, she still wanted to cook and she had stuffed peppers on her mind.  Gram had these red peppers in the frig and she thought we would make it with them.  So, Gram got all the ingredients she needed in her slow moving way.  Bread crumbs, onions and spices.  She asked me "how should we cook them?"  I suggested that we cook them in the oven in a pyrex dish with some water in ther pan. 

I am not a cook.  I find it to be overwhelming.  But my Gram was a brilliant cook and everything she made was to die for.  She could cook anything and everything and she managed to feed five children cooking everything in one pot as we were growing up.  So, we mixed the ingredients together in a bowl and preheated the oven to 350 degrees.  The red peppers were small and we cut them in half. We scooped the mixed ingredients inside the small red peppers.  Gram said they "looked good".  We put the peppers inside the dish and I placed them in the oven.  We sat and waited for them to cook.

I kept checking the peppers and they seemed to be cooking okay, but they were not cooking fast enough so Gram said to raise the temperature to 400 degrees.  She was surely a 'rebel'.  I turned the black knob and raised the temperature hoping that they would cook well.  Again,we waited.  I was becoming discouraged with how they looked so I took them out and my Gram thought that they were done. I put the pyrex dish on a hot plate for them to cool.  I got plates, forks and knives for us.

Well, Gram took the peppers out of the pyrex dish and placed them on our plates.  She said, "oh, they look good".  I was secretly feeling dissappointed because they didn't look good to me.  But Gram just kept telling me they were good as she ate one of the stuffed peppers.  I felt inside that they weren't right, but because Gram was saying that they were good, I thought they were okay after all.

Gram and me at my wedding

Sadly, my Gram passed away August 27th and she lived three weeks just shy of her 99th birthday.  She wanted to live to 100 but her little heart finally gave out and she got on the bus with Jesus to heaven to see her much adored Portugese Prince (as my brother calls him) my grandfather.  Gram told us that she was going to miss all of us and I told her that we would all be okay and one day she will be waiting for us to join her.  When I talked to her the night before she passed away I told her as I told my Mom 16 months ago,  "go towards the light, Gram.  When you see it, go towards the light"

Gram and Grandpa (The Portuguese Prince)

Gram and Grandpa, again

Two weeks ago was her beautiful funeral service.  I made display photo boards to illustrate the 98 years she lived.  They were the best I could do and I was proud to be able to use my creative talent to honor Gram's memory.  My younger brother gave the eulegy.  It was beautiful. 

At the funeral dinner on Thursday night, I mentioned to my brother Ken, who was very close to Gram, that I made the stuffed peppers with her.  I told him that I didn't think that they came out very well but Gram didn't say anything to let me know she thought so.  She knew all along that my suggestion on how to cook them was not good, however she never told me so. When I told my brother  he smiled and said, "I know, Gram told me".

This may sound like this is a simple story about cooking stuffed peppers, but it is more than that. I think it is a story about the character of a woman and how she kept her thoughts to herself when she saw I was making a mistake because she didn't want to hurt my feelings.  Gram knew that we were experiencing a moment together and it could be the last. It was the first time we had ever tried to cook together so as Ken told me, Gram knew we were cooking the peppers wrong, my heart filled up with much saddness and much joy.

Gram and me in her kitchen.  Her funny bird in the back.

Gram and me.  She was so happy

Today, I am missing my Gram so much and I am missing all we shared over the years. From raising me and my siblings since I was 7 years old, to my teenage years that we used to butt heads and the distance in my 20's.  I have come around to know just how special my Gram was.  I wish I had more time to spend with her, but she had lived so long of a life and she was being called to meet her loved ones. 

I am thinking of my Gram and all we experienced together.   I am missing her expressions and her touch. Gram and I did art projects together and created many things.  I brought pretty things to show her such as lovely patterened paper and fabric because I knew how much she loved to look at them. I brushed her hair and sprayed beautiful perfume on her wrists. I sat with her on the sofa and held her hand as we watched the cooks on the Food Network Channel.  We watched the mass together on the Christian Channel that she loved so much.  I remember one night that we watched episodes of 'Reba' and Gram laughed and laughed.  It made me smile inside to see her laugh.

One of the last nights before she passed away, I was getting ready to leave for the night and Gram said out of no where in her Gram way, "Let's have some Cheerios!"  So I sat down and said "sure Gram let's"  So Gram and I sat at her kitchen table and I ate 3 bowls of Cheerios with her.  She ate 1 bowl. As I ate each spoonful, I was thinking to myself... "It doesn't get any better than this. I will never look at Cheerios the same way again"

I know I will always carry my Gram's memory in my heart and I will think of all we shared.  I will write posts about her and about things we did together and about how she raised my siblings and myself and literally saved our lives. 

Gram and me taking a Thelma and Louise photo.  We were having fun.

Another photo of us playing around

Gram playing around at Christmas

                                   

                                                Gram and baby Isabelle.  She LOVED babies!

  

Gram pointing to a paper boat she made.  She loved making them

I love you so much,

your granddaughter and your friend

Loren



THE AWAKENING ABOUT GRAM

When I went to visit my Gram a couple of weeks ago I was so amused that she had been saving something for me to see, for quite awhile, because it was so unusual and funny. I was unaware that this would, cause me to have a major epiphany about my Gram and me. This past weekend I spent some time with her again and this time she had another surprise for me to see. I at the same time, had a total light bulb moment, about Gram and myself.

My Gram raised myself, my two brothers and sister, and uncle , since I was 7. Along with my Dad, we lived in Toms River, New Jersey. She took care of us alone after he passed away when I was 14. When I was in my growing years, Gram and I did not get along very well. I was a creative, and a very emotional teenager and Gram had a lot on her mind and heart. I never felt like we could even remotely relate to anything we were thinking about or feeling. We just didn’t get each other! You know, the teenager years can be awful for the Moms, Dads and yes, even “the Grams”! My Gram did not talk very much during those years and I knew she was always deep in thought about something in her life. My grandfather had passed away when Gram was 50, not too long after she started raising my younger brother Ken. He was 2 years old when Gram began the journey of caring for him and then for myself, my siblings along with her son, my uncle Ron. When Ken was 5 years old, we joined him at Grams.

As I mentioned, during the teenage years, Gram and I were never really close and I never really knew much about her life. Now my Gram is 97 years old and despite her very swollen legs, she is still hanging in there.. (Sometime in the future, I’d like to share the story of my Gram and her life because it is so fascinating. She has experienced many challenges and she had to endure a lot of stress from the time she was a little girl. But for now, I want to talk about this hidden part of Gram that has really revealed itself to me in the last few weeks) I have had an awakening about Gram and her life.

A couple years ago, my Gram and I worked on an art project that she had wanted to create. My Gram loves to cut out little, funny and cute images from magazines and paste them on her refrigerator, cabinets and wall. Gram found this great imagery on a grocery store bag and decided to cut it out with a pair of little scissors. She went at a very slow pace and it took her many hours. The image consisted of some large strawberries and many connected vines. Gram loves every thing strawberries. The design was quite complex and I was amazed how my Gram did this without cutting an opening in the design. It was entirely one piece! I picked up a stretched canvas for her and together we pasted the image down on the canvas and decoupaged it. It went down on to the canvas smoothly without a problem, as we worked together to lay it out, flat and unwrinkled! Just like Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie Cole doing their duo performance together with the help of technology, Gram and I together created a work of art! She proudly, has it hanging on her wall in her kitchen and loves to show it off to everyone that stops by her house.

What has the light bulb moment been? Well, Gram saved a strawberry for me for two weeks ago, to show me the three bumps that it had. It looked like a pig from the side view. She was fascinated by it and it amazed me that she had noticed this peculiar fruit and wanted to share it with me. Again, this past weekend, she saved a potato for me to see. It looked like a “baby’s behind” as Gram had told me, and she thought it was so cute! She couldn’t wait to show it to me. I was again, quietly tickled by her observations of the strawberry and potato. I have begun thinking and have come to realize that Gram has always been a creator at her core and no one, not even myself, had recognized it all these years. She was never really able to express this talent because of the direction her life had taken, as well as, the times she grew up in. Women were not encouraged to pursue art or any career for that matter. Gram had over the years done some ceramics, some sewing and she loved to paint the walls in her house, however, thee awareness of this had eluded my conscious thoughts. I never made the connection! I have often wondered, where I got my creativity from and always believed it was from my Dad. I never actually thought through “where did my Dad get it from?” He most definitely got it from his mother, my Gram. What a journey my Gram and I have been on, to realize that we do have some thing in common. I am amazed to come to the realization that indeed we share this incredible gift and the one thing that is so dear to me, my creative ability. Gram had this ability all these years. It was hidden from the world. Possibly, because no one acknowledged she had talent?

Gram and I see each other from a different perspective now. We get along so nicely and we talk a lot about making things. When I go to visit her, I bring lots of interesting stuff to show her such as pretty buttons, felt, fabric, pretty paper and the most recent stuff I am working on. She loves to look at all of it. ,I think that it was not just the making of the strawberry canvas, that has made me realize Gram has the “creative gift”, but the simple fact that Gram saved the strawberry and potato for me to see! It was that Gram was so observant to notice them at all and even more that she wanted to share this creative insight with me. I see my Gram as whole being now and someone who shares my talent. I have wondered if Gram were to be able to express art and creativity in her life, what she may have created! For now, I am comforted that for all the years I lived with Gram and thought we had nothing in common, and all the years after, Gram and I share a very special gift. We are artists.

CHEERS,

Loren