gone but never forgotten...

the world lost a really cool lady this week. I was lucky to call her my grandma. She had a rough couple of months at the end, but the majority of her life rocked. She was a nurse. Not just any nurse, a nurse who went into the army during World War II. She went all over Europe. She had fabulous stories about going on rides in stolen jeeps, hoping on airplanes for quickie trips to Casablanca, having people take pictures of her that would turn her parents hair grey. She was fun like that. She also had stories about following the soldiers in to liberate concentration camps. Every time I sat down with her she told me a story. Lots of times you would get the same story over and over. Like when she was so mad at my dad she jerked him into the house so fast she doesn't remember opening the screen door. She thinks she pulled him smack through it. Or the one she always told my sister about the cool bar she was at in Boston (my sister goes to Boston University) that rotated around in a circle once an hour. Only they didn't know it rotated so they thought they were a little punch drunk :) This happened the night before she shipped out for Europe. Most of the cool stories she told were about things that happened in her 20s. You could only wish to live as full of a life by the time you were in your mid- 20s.
Once she came home from the war, she started a family and continued nursing. She was a nurse at Children's Hospital for 30+ years. She worked some of the floors that most nurses say it takes a special kind of person to work. She was a special kind of person. When I had my tonsils out, I don't remember much more than vomiting for 4 days straight and her bringing me Garfield comic books to cheer me up. She made sure my nurses knew she was my grandma so that I got VIP status. But mostly it was the Garfield books. We both loved him.
I spent what was her last day at the hospital for 8 hours. I sat with her and if she woke up, I rubbed her arm or stroked her hair until she fell back to sleep. She wasn't aware enough to even know I was there, but I talked to her anyways. Sort of a little closure for me I guess. I didn't know it was her last day, but I knew it was coming.
Today was her funeral. She got a full military honor, 21 guns and all. She'd have loved that. It would have been even more exciting to her because one of the soldiers who folded up her flag was a woman. She was buried in her sweats because it's what she would've wanted. She'd have said she didn't want to wear panty hose through the pearly gates. We also made sure that on her feet, she was sporting her new pair of crocs. She is showing them to everyone in heaven right this minute I'm sure. She had to have them when she saw that all the nurses were wearing them. Everyone knows that nurses have the most comfortable shoes. It was one of the things she kept asking for in the hospital when she was all but delirious. She wanted those shoes!
I'm sad that she is gone. Sad that my kids aren't old enough to remember her stories and that they'll have to hear them second-hand from all of us. I cried when they played 'Taps' for her, but wanted to smile through my tears because if she'd been able, she'd have asked them to play 'boogie-woogie bugle boy' instead. That's just the kind of girl she was.
We're really going to miss her.