ninety years

My grandmother turned 90 yesterday! She's not a big storyteller, so I don't know as many little anecdotes about her as I do about my grandfather, but little slivers of a full life slide out every once in a while. Stories about sneaking out of her house at night with her cousin as a child, going to New York with her best friend Betty Moose. Tiny little snippets of stories about her first husband, Mack, who was killed in World War II. And of course all of my memories of her throughout the past twenty-two years-- her house (popsicles, ice cream, toys, her amazing cooking over the years, thanksgivings and christmasses and so so so much more). Always giving my sister and me a present on each other's birthdays.

And I forgot to call her. I remembered when I was in class, I had it on my calendar, had it written in a couple of places. Have been talking about it for weeks, this, her 90th birthday. While it made me feel absolutely sick when I realized it, it made me feel even worse when I called her today and found out that...nobody called. Not just not me-- nobody. None of her friends from church, not the grandson she raised, not anyone. Not even her son-- she called him. This has been an awfully difficult year for her, with her husband being so sick and being forced out of her home, but I simply can't imagine.... We're all horrible people.

I'm going home tomorrow to do the real celebration, so hopefully that will be a redeeming thing. But karmically, I'm pretty low right now.