One Year

As the anniversary of Grammy's passing approached, I knew I wanted to mark the day but wasn't sure how.  I did have a project I was working on, which I finished the night before: a quilt from her t-shirts and scraps of her fabric or fabrics that made me think of her.

I was kind of stumped about what to do with the family, but it turned out to be a great day, with Suz's help.  The first thing happened because Cat wanted to find pictures of her and Grammy that she could post on Instagram.  We ended up spending a long time looking at scrapbooks, our photo album, and even pictures online.  I loved it.

Later, Ben and Suz came over for a Smash Party.  It was similar to something Suz did last summer, writing down frustrations on clay pigeons and then shooting them out of the air.  We didn't go shooting this year as the anniversary fell on a Sunday, but we put an old drop cloth out in the yard and smashed the clay pigeons with hammers and a baseball bat.  We wrote a range of frustrations on the discs, from "wet socks" to "Calculus" to "hatred" to "Covid" to "Grammy's death."

Suz rounded out the party with some of Grammy's favorites: Haribo peach gummies and Dr. Pepper.  It was a great way to have a little fun, think of Grammy, and release some stress.

That night around bedtime I felt inspired to do what turned out to be the most therapeutic activity of the day: I sat on my bed and typed up a long letter to Mom, talking to her as if she was in the room.  I caught her up on our lives and told her all the things that were on my mind.  I think I'll do that every year.