Today in HiveBloPoMo it was suggested to make about a departed loved one.
My Paternal Grandparents
Today would have been my grandma's birthday, so how fitting. I'm talking about my dad's mother. She was the last living grandparent I had. I never met her husband, my grandpa, because he died when my mother was expecting me. I don't remember my mother's dad, because he died when I was 3. I only remember my mother's mother a little, because she also died when I was young.
My dad's mother, then, was the only grandparent I really got to know.
She died just a few weeks after her 71st birthday, I was 17.
My grandma's parents immigrated from Sweden to the United States (Minnesota) before she was born (she was the oldest of four girls). Her sisters all lived in Minnesota their entire lives. When my grandma married, she moved to Wisconsin. She lived there the rest of her life, but also travelled every year to see her sisters and their families.
My Paternal Grandparents Celebrating 25 Years of Marriage
My grandma met her husband on a blind date. I don't know the details of how it all got arranged, but I thought it interesting because my parents also met on a blind date, and I met my husband on a blind date.
She and my grandpa had one child - my dad. They would have liked to have more children, but something happened during the delivery of my dad that prevented her from having more children. I guess it was good my dad enjoyed being an only child.
As her oldest grandchild, and being a girl, she talked to me a lot about things that happened to her. Things she never told my dad, probably because women brought up the way she was didn't talk about certain things to the opposite sex. My dad never knew why he was an only child until years after my grandma died and I told him what she told me.
I still think of her from time to time, even though she passed away so long ago. I remember fondly a lot of things we did together, just the two of us, like taking the train to visit family in Minnesota.