Been quiet here, I know...

Hi all -

Been really quiet here. Been too busy with life.

My grandmother died on Friday. She was 91, slipped away after going into a coma after getting spread too thin.

She was my step-grandmother, I never really knew my "real" grandmother, who died of cancer when I was a kid. I remember being driven in the middle of the night to my grandfather's house when I was probably around 6 or so and waiting what seemed to be forever in the car while my mother was with her mother for the last time.

Jean was my grandfather's second wife. She worked at Field's in Chicago and had an interesting life, but no kids of her own. She and my grandfather were, for the most part, I think pretty happy in being married: however, towards the ends of their lives there were unspoken tensions and unresolved problems between them that certainly didn't help.

I'm not into writing an obituary - there's too much I don't know about her - and just wanted to say how sad it is that we'll never see her again. I will miss her enormously: she was an important part of my grandfather's life, and he was important to me as well. He died on Good Friday of last year at the age of 94.

They were the major reason for us always heading down to New Mexico, to see them. In the last several years it was harder and harder to do so, since they would easily get exhausted if we hung around them too much. So we would go down there, stay a few days and visit them for a few hours a day. They were a long, long way from Germany.

I wish I could have been there more for them. They were in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where they were far, far away from all of the kids and grandkids. They wanted it that way, to a certain extent, but at the same time I think that they would've been pleased to see someone down that way as well. But the jobs down there are far and few between for what I do, and we never really looked at moving down there seriously. We've played with the idea of retiring in New Mexico, but that is still far away, but the state was, I think, good for them.

Grandma, I'll miss ya and you will always be with me. God bless and make some Manhattans for you and Grandpa for the porch. We'll keep an eye out for the hummingbirds and roadrunners out the back door.

John