Feeling: sad, but okay
Listening to: Brindi Carlile - Tragedy
Reading/Watching: Gilmore Girls, season 3

When I was little, and my parents were going away for a weekend (or a week) for one of Dad's business trips, they would have MawMaw come stay at our house. When she was younger and able to handle driving back and forth (it was over an hour from her house), she would even come just to babysit for an evening so they could go out, and stay the night.

MawMaw always had junk food at her house- unbelievable amounts of junk food. She liked loading us up with sugar and then unleashing us on our unsuspecting parents. We watched videos and played board games and round after round of Camps with her battered deck of cards (eventually everyone knew the six of clubs had a notch in it, so if someone on the other team had it, you could hoard sixes so they never got four of a kind... it was evil).

She had a game called Sugar Bear, where she played a giant teddy bear who wanted "sugar", a.k.a. hugs and tickles. So we'd try to get past her and if she grabbed us, she'd pull us into her lap and tickle us silly. The best games were when she would move around the house as Moving Sugar Bear, and we would try to hide. If we were found, the tickling and kisses ensued. I remember how Puppy would get the giggles and be unable to hide, or even run, so he almost always got caught first. He didn't mind too much.

She went out dancing at "The Club," a senior singles place, every week. She claims to have received many offers of dates, even a few proposals, but she'd had enough of marriage with her first two husbands. When her son Paul and his wife were outgrowing their small house with their four daughters, she traded houses with them, and let them have the large white house with more bedrooms.

She was a fiercely independent woman, the kind of smart that's a little scary. She did crossword puzzles in pen, drank coffee black and ate bread with cane syrup, which smelled disgusting but she loved it. And when she got Alzheimer's, it was heartbreaking for her as much as for us, because she could feel her mind betraying her.

Eventually it wasn't safe for her to take care of us, because she wasn't a good driver anymore (she'd confuse right and left, and miss stop signs), and she would forget where we'd gone, and sometimes confuse who we were. I was called by my mom's name, or my cousin's, or my aunt's.

My mom's three sisters all lived in the same town, so they brought her to live near them, in a trailer on my aunt Sue's property. She wasn't happy about the arrangement, but was no longer capable of assessing how much help she needed. And after a few years of that, she began to confuse time, and sitting alone for a few minutes could feel like hours, and hours could feel like days. They decided she needed to be in a full-time care facility, so she could have the company and attention she craved.

It was a bit of a relief, and not much of a surprise, to hear on Sunday that she had died (quietly, in her sleep, at age 85). But my eyes still filled with tears when my father told me over the phone. I spoke to my mom for a few minutes, and she was relatively calm, but teary as well. Vivian Titus-Sydnes was a remarkable woman, a great mother and an even better grandmother.

The one good thing about this is that she's free now. She's in a place where her mind works the way it should. She can be with her husband (whichever one she decides she liked better, or maybe both if they're cool with it), and her three sons. And on Wednesday, the Titus family (which took things literally when God said "Go forth and multiply") will gather en masse to say goodbye, all 19 cousins and 4 sets of aunts and uncles together for the first time in at least ten years.

It will be great. It will be sad, but it will be great.

Oh, and also, keeping my promise to Julie:

Pay It Forward! I will send a handmade gift to the first three people who leave a comment on my diary requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don't know what that gift will be yet, and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is Pay It Forward by making the same promise on your diary.

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