Tell me about your lovely grandparents!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Did you have amazing grandparents? I did. I was very lucky.

In fact I was ridiculously lucky. Besides my own grandparents, I had my grandparents-in-law who I knew well over a decade. My grandmother-in-law died yesterday, I’ll miss her so much. She managed, in our last conversation, to reaffirm to me that I am family to her. She wasn’t a calculating person, just a person with a big heart. So she didn’t think it through, I think it was just natural to her to let me know that. She was telling me all the naughty family secrets, and then said: “you’re family, but don’t tell anyone else”.

I was close to my late grandfather-in-law too, we bonded the first time we met because we both liked horses. It always amazed the rest of the family that the usually silent Opa H. chatted away with me. He knew so much about horses and all animals. I have a lovely picture of him with a goat on the mantlepiece. I’ll have to find a good one of my GMIL to remember her by.

I knew three of my great-grandparents, and all my own grandparents. That gives me a total of 9 (great)grandparents who enriched my life! However much I will miss them, I feel so lucky to have known them. I still have two grandmothers and I’ll give them an extra hard squeeze next time I hug them.

Enough about me, tell me about the grandparents who meant a lot to you!

(If your grandparent was an abusive sociopath or something, I hope you wouldn’t mind starting your own thread. While I don’t want to disacknowledge anyone’s experiences, I’d really like a thread to celebrate grandparents.)

2

I was adopted and a step-child so the ins-and-outs of my familial memories are like the stitchings in a crazy quilt, but…the grandfather I knew wore a rope through his belt-loops because it held his pants up well enough. He always carried bananas in his car (that he only drove in first gear) to give out to us kids (out playing) that he passed along the way back to the house from wherever he’d been. He was known as the Gourd King of our area and was written up in the paper. He grew all kinds and painted them to look like various things. He took me to the Fair with him, his table set up near the hanging (graded) tobacco which gave me a leg up later when “we” married a cigarette salesman and I groped for something to talk to “him” about.

My grandfather constructed a little latticed hide-away under the steep stairs at the back of their house, just for us kids (which of course included neighbors down the lane.) He sat on the short bench inside it with us once, too big and taking up all the room. He had a razor strop hanging inside the closet door upstairs that my grandmother would throw open and threaten us with when she was beside herself, but it was really only used when he was getting ready to shave.

I’ll have to talk about my grandmother another time. It would take too long.

3

I don’t have a story like yours, although I love my ex-mother-in-law (she felt like a grandmother) and I also like my husbands grandmother a lot. Both women show me that being old does not mean having to be lonely. Both are women with attractive personalities, and both attract old and new friends, and love and caring in their kids, even now when they are old and in bad health.

I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your grandma-in-law. She sounds like a great person.

4

When my Grampa was in his nineties, he went into town to buy some dynamite to blow beaver dams on a patch of land he owned. As he had done for probably 75yrs or so. When they refused him and told him to send in one of his many sons instead, (very small town where a couple of his grown sons still lived!), and they’d sell it to them gladly. Grampa was some steamed! When the uncles turned up to calm him and reassure him they’d go straight to town and get what he wanted, it just made it worse somehow. He never set foot in that hardware store again, held a grudge the rest of his life.

Story was, he’d met my Gran when she was nine or ten years old, and waited for her to grow up, marrying her at fifteen, I believe. They had thirteen children all at home. He was a subsistence farmer, and as a child, every visit there were different collections of animals, pigs, cows, chickens, bees, a small apple orchard on the place.

When my father, a city dweller, first went to visit his future in laws, he could not take his electric razor. And all of my childhood there was no running water, in what was, more or less, a tarpaper shack. A well in the yard, a wood stove still cooked on and used heat the place!

My Gran lived to be 104 yrs old, and often reflected that she felt sorry for kids today. Married at fifteen, pregnant and nursing for well on 15 yrs straight, no running water or washing machine, etc. and thought life was so hard for kids today! I miss her every day!

5

My maternal grandmother is 90 years old and rises at 4:30 a.m. every day to run a sort of soup kitchen (a bunch of them, nowadays) in Vasai, Maharashtra, India (they sell below-cost food to itinerant workers and give it away free to the homeless and destitute). She’s been financing the project herself for forty years.

6

I’ve mentioned this in a couple of other threads.

Years before my parents married, my paternal grandfather had died, and my maternal grandmother had died. Since my maternal grandfather was left single-parenting 8 kids, he hired my paternal grandmother to be their cook (she really was an excellent cook). Several years later, I think around the time I was born, the two of them married. So they were the only grandparents I ever knew, one from each side, who were married to each other.

And more about my maternal grandfather: He came from a small shtetl (like in “Fiddler on the Roof” in Poland or Russia, depending on who had won the last war. After he came here he brought over all his siblings, one by one as he could afford it. He also brought over his elderly mother. But his father and their large extended family stayed there. Then the Holocaust happened, and every single one of the people left behind were killed. The only part of the family that survived were the ones my grandfather brought here.

7

My great grandmother lived until I was 14 and she was amazing. I was her first great grandchild and I was born only a few days before her birthday. She lived in her own apartment until a few weeks before her death and every Sunday we would drive about 3 hours to Trenton to pick her up and then drive to the Stirling Cheese factory for fresh cheese curds. Most weeks we would stop for KFC for dinner because that was her favorite. She taught me to crochet, slipped me candy, dosed me with whiskey and honey in my tea when I was sick and spoiled me rotten. When she died I was still the only female grandchild and a lot quieter than the boys so I was her favorite :wink:

She supported my grandmother when she became pregnant with my father out of wedlock and then again 10 years later when my grandmother divorced with a 10 yr old, a 6 yr old and a baby. She worked the family farm most of her life, basically on her own after her husband died when she was 60 until the farm was sold just before I was born. She loved her little apartment and how modern it was. She had the most amazing stories and I used to spend hours just sitting beside her chair listening to her talk about her life.

8

My mom’s parents died when I was an infant so I didn’t know them.

My paternal grandma was crazy. Like, sent-off-for-electroshock-therapy crazy. I’ll admit I was scared of her as a toddler. She had a funny voice from smoking and was tall and thick. But she gave us a lot of presents. She liked making stuffed toys and pillows out of those cut-out cloth patterns you could buy at the store, and stuff with batting. She died on my 7th birthday, and she had made me a pillow out of one of these patterns before she died, as a birthday gift. I tried to keep it forever but being that it was so cheaply done, it only lasted a few years.

Grandpa got re-married about 2 years later. When grandma was sick and got “sent away” in the 50s, and had 4 little kids around, the Mennonite church to which they belonged sent a woman to take care of the house and the kids. 30-some years later, grandpa married that woman.

So I was about 9 when I got my “bonus grandma.” Grandpa moved from the city (where he’d lived for 60 years) to Amish country, about 2 hours south of here. Bonus Grandma had grown up Amish but her family left the order when she was 18 and they became Mennonite. She had traveled the world and got an education, then came back to Ohio to care for her ailing parents in the house where she grew up. She no longer owned a whole farm but just the house, tucked in between the corn field and barn.

So then basically I grew up with an Amish grandma. All of a sudden we had summers in the country, Amish friends and food, swinging on a rope in the barn, running through corn fields, learning Pennsylvania Dutch. It was pretty awesome!

Grandpa died this April at the age of 89. I took it very very very hard. My grandparents are extremely religious but they absolutely walk the walk. They are pacifists, they love everyone, they try not to judge, they give til it hurts. Losing grandpa was, for me, like losing the embodiment of Jesus in my life. It still hurts me a lot.

Grandma is a few years younger than Grandpa, so she’s doing quite well. She left the farm house and lives in a retirement village. I’ve managed to visit once since grandpa died, and we had a great time. It’s weird and comforting to know that she has this huuuuuge other family aside from us (her brothers and sisters and their families) so I felt a little twinge of sadness over losing touch with her when Grandpa died, knowing she’ll sort of “melt” back into that family. Not that she would ever forget me or I will ever forget her, or anything like that.

Anyway, that’s my lovely lovely grandparents. You guys would like them :slight_smile:

9

I never met my maternal grandparents, but from all accounts, they were very good people:

Grandpa was a doctor in Lahore. When the Partition happened, they took their three young children and fled across the border to Punjab, nearly losing their 2 Yo daughter on the way. I’ve told this story before, and it’s not relevant to this thread.

Grandpa set up a practice in Punjab. He made a habit of saying “namaste” to anyone he passed on the road. As a doctor, his social status was very high, but he namasted all classes, even lower than him. My aunt remembers a time where they passed a man which my grandpa didn’t notice, and later she asked him, “Daddy, why didn’t you say namaste to that man?” My grandpa went all the way back to beg the man’s apology for not having said anything.

My grandma had servants, like most upper class in India. I’ve been told a story of when one of her Dalit (untouchable, classless) servants came in after her husband had beat the crap out of her, and my grandma took her in and put her on her own bed and bandaged her with her own hands. Unheard of in those days.

More dear to my heart are my great-aunt and uncle, who treated me like their own grandchild. My great-uncle lived on the farm until the day he died, and every day he would walk a couple of miles into town with a yoke slung over his shoulder with pails of fresh milk for his son and daughter-in-law, and then walk back at night to tend to the animals.
My grea-aunt moved into town but she was a firecracker. Half of the swear words I know in Punjabi I learned from her, and half of those I don’t know what they mean. I loved her so much. When I first met her I tried to touch her feet and she pulled me up and embraced me and said, “Daughters never touch feet, they only hug.”

I don’t know much about my paternal grandfather, but my paternal grandmother gave me an Om pendant I still have.

10

My maternal grandmother was one of the nicest people on Earth. As kids, she would bring us cake whenever she visited, and she was sweet to everyone. Her life was interesting: she came to American as a child, changed her first name (I didn’t know her real name until long after she was gone), married a dentist, who died early. Then she went back into the workforce as a secretary in the 1950s. Back then, ageism was an issue, so she lied about her age and used to brag about her “sister” (really her daughter). She lived on her own until she was over 90 and reach 96 years old.

I never knew that grandfather, since he died before I was born. He was a pioneer in root canal surgery, though, as well as in filming dental procedures as a teaching tool. They named a room at Columbia University Medical Center after him, though the exact location is now lost as they remodeled.

My fraternal grandfather was a friend of Albert Einstein. He ran a store on eastern Long Island (my brother still runs it) and was always asking me, “Did you teach the teacher?” when I showed up after school.

My grandmother was also a lovely person, who like to make braided rugs and beach plum jelly.

11

My grandmother lived with us for the last seven years of her life. It was not until I was grown-up and out of the house and married that it occurred to me - my father lived in the same house as his mother-in-law.

And it worked, because both made an effort to be respectful. There were only two times I ever heard my father cry - when his business partner of forty years died, and when his mother-in-law died.

My dad always had Wednesdays off, and he and my mom would go out to dinner and leave my grandmother to babysit. This is a high point of the week. We always had potato pancakes and applesauce for dinner, and then put on a talent show. Grandma always said “all a child needs is your time”, and she had lots of that and would share it with us.

But she got respect. Once I did something naughty - I don’t recall what it was - but I was not allowed to grate the potato for my potato pancakes. I was devastated - she could have hit me with a club and not hurt me as much as that. And if mom or dad were mad at you, maybe you could get some commiseration from your siblings. But if grandma was mad at you, you were a Bad Person and you better shape up.

But most of the time, it was her telling us stories of the stuff she did growing up, or teach us songs and stories in German (she grew up speaking German), or her trip to Hawaii back when it was an exotic location.

I never met my grandfather, who died while my mom was pregnant with me. And the stories they tell about hiim make him sound sort of ogreish, but they always ended up “you would have loved him”. Maybe I would, but he sure made an impression on my grandma. She outlived him by fourteen years, and she didn’t talk about him all that much.

But her dying words were to him. His name was Jesse but he hated it, and everyone called him Jack. And about an hour before my grandmother died of pancreatic cancer, she smiled at nothing, said “Jack, take me home”, and died without regaining consciousness.

Regards,
Shodan

12

Never met mine. My parents were in their 40s when I came along.

One died well before I was born - Dad’s father; Dad was a teen at the time.

One died within a few years of my birth - Dad’s mother, who pretty much cut off all contact with her first husband and their kids when hubby took ill.

One died when I was a teen - Mom’s mother, who never really had any conatct with her descendants. I think she had been institutionalized for most of her life.

One, Mom’s father, is a complete mystery; all we have is a name on her birth certificate. Mom may have bene conceived in one of those insittutions.

13

The porridge went into the bowl, the milk surrounded the now porridge island. The blob of jam in the centre and Nana set the bowl down with the word “Now!” She hitched her knitting needle under her right arm and clacked with her left, she knitted Aran hats and scarves and gloves and jumpers for everyone and there were a lot of us. The last time I saw her she was very weak and old. Us kids were told to leave her alone but she said “Ah will you let the children play”. I knew I was kissing her for the last time and as I touched her soft creased cheek gently with my little girl lips I had the sensation that a fine layer of her skin had come on to my lips from that kiss.

Granny was on the phone EVERY evening. How tedious! I later discovered she was a Good Samaritan and talked down suicidal ex-soldiers.

14

Are we talking lovely, or amazing?

Because you know, Abuelita and her cousins mostly weren’t what I’d call “lovely”, being too no-nonsense for that and likely to turn Cat(erpillar, of the large, metallic, yellow variety) on anybody who opposed them, but Abuelita was a shark at board games, specially parcheesi - and a superb teacher of them. She knew how to teach you at your own pace, let you make your own mistakes, accepted being asked “are you sure?” herself when eventually we were able to do it, and didn’t merely teach us how to play but also how to win and how to lose, two skills many people lack. I just realized how many of my teaching techniques I got from her, as well.

She had two cousins with whom she’d often go on vacations, once she became a widow. One of them was unmarried; the other one had lost her husband “in the most idiotic possible way!” 30 years prior (spends the whole war in the front unscathed, comes home after the end of the war and gets run over by a car). One of these worked for many years as the capital-S-Secretary of the most important woman in the country; her house was full of historical knickknacks such as a fan commemorating Isabel II’s wedding; it always cracked me up to hear her refer to the king as “Juanito” (Li’l Johnny). Having discovered Real Tea in her travels, this little woman would, when faced with the horrible concoction which got brewed in Spanish bars at the time, get behind the bar and teach the waiter how to prepare a semi-decent tea (as she said “mind you, it’s always Lipton’s so no good, but at least they can brew it properly”).

From the other one’s recounting of her adventures, I learned that it is possible for a woman traveling on her own to spend six months abroad… probably scaring to death anybody stupid enough to oppose her; she’s also the person who at one point said that my choice of Chemical Engineering as a profession had a precedent in the family. Another cousin which I never got to meet (pity!) was a Chemist* and spent her whole career working for a foundry as a production engineer, back when the only two women in most factories would be the receptionist and the manager’s secretary.

  • Her father owned the Northern Spain analytical lab. She did her work long-distance tutored by him; eventually she had to travel to Salamanca to take her oral exam. The tribunal were extremely surprised to find out that this student whose firstname was always listed as “R.” was a tall, large blonde called Rosa. Since Queen Joanna had opened university to women, they had to swallow their sexism and let her take the test. It started normally, as a series of questions being asked and answered, but ended as a conversation among colleagues. Fuck yeah she passed. I think she was the first woman to get a science degree in Spain; definitely one of the first to graduate from University.
15

Oh definitely both! And other nice adjectives too!

A while ago I watched a documentary, I think it was BBC, that began by explaining that grandmothers were very important for human evolution. They explained how rare it is for a species to live considerable time after childbearing age, and how that influenced human development. They were (claimed the documentary) instrumental in passing on culture and teaching. Once they are no longer of real use to a group or family as hunter or other food producer, their survival means they were probably of use in other ways. So it’s grandmothers, you might say, that make us human.

That’s what I tell my Granny. And it’s true, in her case. She helped raise me, while my parents worked. I know all her stories about me, how we discussed the existence of god while she navigated Antwerp, how she nearly fell out of the curtains she was hanging up when I read “the doctor is using his stethoscope”. I think it was also a second chance for her. She’s never told my mum, but she told me that she cried every night that they were away at boarding school. It didn’t even occur to her there might be an alternative.

16

Did, and still do.

Their amazing story mostly remains to be told…

17

I was fortunate enough to know all four. In order of their passing…
My paternal grandfather may have been the man I’ve loved most in life. He and I were buds and he’d take me to breakfast at the Waffle House whenever we were in town. He’d started a ball bearing company, lived out in the country in Ft. Worth and was a man of incredible character and integrity. He died of a misdiagnosed aneurysm when I was 10 and it broke my heart. I was given his Stetson hat, his bluejean jacket and later his car and shotgun. Still have the gun and I think of him every time I see it, and a whole lot of other times too.

My paternal grandmother was easily the most religious woman I’ve ever met. She wanted me to be a preacher and would involve me in all sorts of church activities and write out verses for me to remember. I lived with her for awhile after college when I worked in Ft. Worth and we became very close. She was an antiques dealer and that’s where my love for them came from. Thankfully, I spent the day with her just before she died. We never could part with their country place in Ft. Worth and still have it purely out of sentimentality… and now Barnet shale wells. :smiley:

Mt maternal grandmom came from one of the original settling families in Arlington, Texas and streets and history books mention the family often. She was a wonderful cook and a remarkable wit, but unfortunately her husband tended to dominate conversations and I didn’t get to enjoy just her near often enough. They were married for 74 years until the flu finally got her at 94. I was with her when she passed too and am sure had it not been for the flu she’d have hit 100. She was such a fine woman.

Maternal grandad was a bit more troublesome. Extremely principled but also opinionated and was compelled to share that since he knew he was right. I really got to hate how he dominated conversations, Thanksgiving dinner, watching TV at night, everywhere. He’d retired wealthy at 50 and just had too much nervous energy. Always talikin’ politics! Ugh, probably why I detest them now. Anyway after he and grandma had their 74th anniversary and the flu took her, at 94 he had a nurse come help around the house and they got him on some kind of anti depressant or something and it was the darndest thing, all of a sudden he turned into the most pleasant guy, cheerful, happy, and for the first time in my life I heard him say “I love you.” I’d give anything if dear ol’ grandma who’d suffered silently all those years could have seen that transformation! Grandad died at 100 with my sister at his side relaying messages from me that I loved him too.

18

Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were amazing people. Sadly I never knew my maternal grandmother, as she passed away before I was born, but by all accounts she was amazing, too.

I have so many stories about them, both what I experienced myself, and the things they did before I was born.

One of the stories, I’ve told here before: my maternal grandfather was Jewish, and a champion long-distance swimmer. At the time he was a young man - the 1920s - being a Jewish athlete was difficult in Canada. Athletics was dominated by private sports clubs which did not accept Jews as members. Undaunted, my grandfather trained on his own and with friends - but he found it difficult to get any kind of recognition. Races and the like were also organized by sports clubs, and again, Jews were not welcome to compete - allegedly on the grounds Jews were ‘not athletic’.

My grandfather thought this was bullshit, as indeed it was, and set out to prove them wrong.

There was a major long-distance swim race (to swim around Toronto Islands) being held. My grandpa waited until after all the other contestants had started - waited until the refs had gone to the finish line - and then he jumped in and swam after them.

He won by a considerable margin, even with the other swimmers having a head-start.

The headline in one Toronto paper the day after was something like “JEWBOY WINS RACE” (this was not, at the time, written to be derogatory - the tone of the article was highly complementary).

19

My mother’s father was a sweet, sweet man, who talked to us kids as if we were human beings, even (possibly pretending, but we couldn’t tell) being interested in what we had to say. I think he was always that way. My mother called him Daddy, although she called her mother Mother.

My father’s mother was always very nice to me, although she was capable of having a temper. Apparently she was hell on wheels when my father was growing up, possibly due to the stress of poverty and too many kids. But to me she was always especially nice, I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was kind of a little sad sack as a child. The only photo of me as a kid that I like was taken on Christmas at her house, she’s standing behind me with her hands over my chest, and I’m grinning like mad. I never smiled for photos, but that was an exception. We didn’t see her as often as my mother’s parents, even though they lived in the same town, I suspect because my father couldn’t get over his grudges from childhood.
Roddy

20

I was also fortunate enough to know all four of my grandparents, and I still have both of my grandmothers.

Dad’s dad died in 1992, we didn’t spend a lot of time with my Dad’s parents because my Dad didn’t really get along with his family. But we did spend every Thanksgiving with Dad’s parents. Grandpa would sit at the head of the table and gripe good-naturedly at everyone to stop passing the food around the table so he could eat. Grandpa also convinced my sister and I that you had to jump around and yell while popping Jiffy Pop popcorn or else it wouldn’t turn out right.

Mom’s dad died in 1995. He was one of the best cooks I have ever met. He could grill anything and make it taste good. I haven’t had a decent steak since he passed away. He would grill outside in any weather, rain, snow, you name it. I remember some party we were having that Granddad was outside grilling in a pouring rain with my Dad and one of my uncles holding a tarp over him to keep the grill dry.

Dad’s mom is still with us at 91, but she is very frail and very forgetful. She’s in a home now and I honestly don’t think she remembers any of us. Again, didn’t spend a lot of time with her due to family conflicts, but I do have good memories. Grandma took my sister and I apple and strawberry picking every year, and then we would help her make pies and jam.

Mom’s mom is 86 and will probably outlive us all. She survived cancer that the doctor told her she had three months to live- that was three years ago. Gran helped raise me while my parents worked. She has taught me how to bake, and how to play cards, especially euchre and pinochle and hearts and gin. She also will still play video games with anyone, and probably beat you badly in the process. We had an Atari 2600 and Gran had the highest River Raid and Galaxian scores of anyone in the family.