Meemaw.

My grandmother passed away on Tuesday. The truth is, I think it was a freeing thing for her to go.

Yesterday, I was thinking about Meemaw, the one that was here when I was a kid, before dementia and Alzheimer's and strokes and those things. She was marvelous.

I was thinking about this one purse I have. It is white, and it is made up of little pieces of metal. Like armor, kind of. It used to be in my grandmother's closet. She had an incredible walk-in closet that went back clear to the wall, and some days––only some days––she would let me have a fashion show. I would try on her shoes and her purses and her necklaces and walk the runway of that walk-in closet. We would giggle and then sit on her bed, looking at the pictures above it, one of every grandchild.

More often, when we didn't fashion show, we played a game of Meemaw's own invention. There was a looooooong hallway behind the kitchen. At one end Meemaw would set a basket. At the other were Meemaw, Logan, and me. (Me a little closer because I was the smallest.) Meemaw gathered every clean pair of socks she could find, and we played a simple tossing game, points for sinking a sock into the basket. Looking back it seems like that would have bored me to death, but Meemaw made it fun.

She was a special lady, and she loved us so much. She made such a big deal out of her grandchildren, whether it was reading us stories or making us a pallet on the floor out of blankets, she always did so many extra things to make our time at her house special. She made skillet cornbread and Mississippi mud pie and lasagna, and her freezer always always always had chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. And she always always always made us ask Momma before having a bowl.

Want to know the best part? Whenever I would go over to my grandparents' house for dinner, no matter what she was serving, Meemaw would cook me one individual twice baked potato. Because they were my favorite. That's love.

She was a dream and a half, Vira Kennedy. And I'm glad she's free and with the Lord.

Here is her obituary. It makes me very happy: Meemaw's Obituary.