In Honor

My grandmother Margaret (Muggs) Davies made her transition at 5:30 this morning.  After my class Thursday, I'll fly back to Idaho for the service.  She died a few years after my Grandpa Homer, her husband, died of lung cancer.  I'm glad that she didn't suffer for a very long time, and that she and my family had the wisdom to let go when it was time.  I'm glad that my aunts brought her to McCall a few days ago, so she could be in the home she loved when she died.

As with my other grandparents, I don't know a lot about my Grandma Muggs.  She loved huckleberrying in McCall, Idaho, where she lived for most of her life.  She was a devout Christian.  She had a palsy that caused her to shake badly and made it very difficult for her to eat and communicate at the end of her life.  She almost always wore a gold cross around around her neck.  Her skin and hair were a translucent white.  She was stubborn as hell, but I mostly experienced her as quiet and loving.  She was trained in physical education early on and always cared about nutrition and exercise.  She had a temper, but was thought of by some as a "blue-blood," and so her temper looked something like Katharine Hepburn's temper:  big but genteel.  Everyone in McCall knew her, and her family, the Browns.

I should know more of the history, but I don't.  I'm going to re-read this book, which has a lot of my family history in it:

Then maybe I'll know more.

Of course, the knowing is not the thing.

Anyway, three years ago, I had all of my grandfathers and grandmothers still alive.  My three grandfathers have all passed.  Yesterday, I still had my three grandmothers.  Now I have two.  I'm so grateful to have known all of my grandparents, and to have had them around this long.

Thinking of Margaret Brown Davies today.