A Tribute to My Grandmother

This wasn’t how I initially planned to start my blog, but when my grandmother, Madeline Fay Gallagher, passed away last Sunday morning, I thought there was no better way to kick off this little venture than by paying tribute to a very special woman. I will miss you, grandma.

I always had trouble sleeping at my grandparents’ house. There were two reasons. One, I was always a combination of too excited and wired from the array of candy that always adorned grandma’s kitchen counter, arranged in neat, clean jars beneath the cabinets. My grandparents’ home was a wonderland of sorts. You could swim, play ping pong or billiards or tennis or basketball or even a grand piano (poorly, in my case). There were also a collection of board games, toys and books which lay undisturbed the odd days grandchildren weren’t invading their home. With all of that treasure waiting for you, sleep felt like a waste of perfectly good frolicking time.

The second reason I would have trouble sleeping was my grandparents’ home turned surprisingly spooky in the evenings. The eeriness increased the farther back in the house you traveled, culminating in the ominous back bedrooms, nearest the pool. The combination of a back porch light against a large pomegranate tree created shadows through the window, which gesticulated threateningly against the backlit walls. The house’s lengthy hallway leading to the back bedrooms would also yawn and creak throughout the night, as if some apparition was pacing back and forth through the corridor. I would lie in bed frightened for a time until I imagined the creaking house was just grandpa keeping watch outside, and eventually I would drift to sleep.

In the mornings, I was always awake much too early, but never before grandma and grandpa. They were already digging into the morning paper, sitting in the dining room in front of a large window that overlooked their front yard. “How did you sleep?” my grandma would ask.

“Great!” I said, already planning my day’s festivities. But it always started with breakfast, just the three of us while I looked over the Sports page, trying to show a mature reserve before wreaking havoc on their unsuspecting wonderland. “Are you done with the comics?” I’d ask halfway through my second bowl of Trix.

My grandfather was a doctor, but my grandparents made their money in the early days in real estate, buying a house after the Second World War, letting the property appreciate before selling it, then rinsing and repeating the process a few times until finally building the house they would raise their six children in, before it finally became the playground of 11 unruly grandchildren.

My grandmother was always generous with her time and her service. Feeding others wasn’t just a chore for her, it was a theology and if there was one thing she wouldn’t tolerate, it was a foolish dishwasher arrangement. But her grace always abounded. She would just rearrange the plates and pans the way she liked later. 

As I got older, I would bring friends over to the house, to swim and play basketball or shoot pool. I would always call first. “You don’t have to call,” my grandma would always say. “Just come over.”

“Well, I was just making sure no one else was using the pool.”

“Just come over any time you want. Even if we aren’t here.” That last bit was always funny. It seemed like they were always there for us.

My friends loved the house too, in part, because my grandparents treated any friend of mine like a grandchild of theirs. “You can play pool, but no gambling,” Was my grandpa’s go-to joke. The vast array of sodas in the garage—usually the same selection you could find in your local grocery store—were always for us. I only realized later that it was all for us—that house much too big for just them. My grandpa spent hours tending that yard (both my brothers were married in it), my grandma doing the same inside, all the work the upkeep must have been. The sacrifice that house represented never occurred to me then.

My grandmother loved history. She liked to talk about her college days in Oregon, “Not many women went to college back then,” she would remind us, not as a boast so much as an indication of the times and how they’ve changed. She talked about the city in the days when there was just one stoplight, when farmland engulfed the area. The orchards and cornfields and cherry blossoms have been pushed back to the edge of the city now.

The story of how they met is famous in our family and I’ve probably repeated it near as many times as my grandpa now. “They’ve heard this story, Hugh” grandma would say, but he’d just plow through, understanding a good story is worth telling over and over. He was from Nebraska, but during the war, he caught a ride in the backseat of a jeep that rolled over a land mine. He injured his foot and used it as an opportunity to relocate.

“Where would you like to go?” They asked him.

“How about California,” my grandpa said.

In the rehabilitation hospital in California, a pretty nurse named Fay was taking care of him. My grandpa’s roommate confided in him, “I think I’m going to ask her out.”

“Are you kidding?” my grandpa replied. “She’s way too young.”

“I only said that, because I wanted to ask her out,” my grandpa always added when telling the story, in case we missed the point. They were married just a short time later.

My grandparents had three priorities in particular order: God, family and tennis. My grandfather had a tennis court built in the middle of his cul-de-sac, which was remarkable enough, but the two of them also watched the sport vociferously, recording even the most fringe tournaments to watch them later, on video cassette. Whenever I would ask grandma who she was rooting for, she would always say, “I just want to see a good match.”

When my grandpa died, and the house was placed on the market, I thought for certain I would miss it. But I didn’t really. After grandma moved out, it just became a mass of wood and cement and panels. I haven’t been back to see it since she moved out. I’m not sure I ever will.

My grandmother possessed strong faith in God, devotion to her husband and tender love for her grandchildren, but her quiet strength, pleasant nature and grace will be the memories that linger. There were times, in the wonderland of their home, when I wished, and maybe actually believed, that none of it would ever come to an end. That we would continue on and on forever in that way, celebrating major holidays in that home, cooling off in their pool every summer, grandpa pruning trees in his sun hat, grandma chatting with one of her daughters in the patio room. Somewhere deep down, I believed those haunted back rooms would always cast their shadows as grandpa roamed the hallways, keeping guard, allowing the grandchildren to sleep peacefully. There would always be more early morning breakfasts to share.

The most startling realization is always that it will never be the same. That it never could be. The undefinable essence of my grandparents’ lives and my experiences with them can never be replicated. And it becomes clear what made your loved ones the way they are was something singular—unchangeable and unrepeatable. And then you realize just how special their lives really were.