Mary Haldeman Dayton April 12, 1927- August 30, 2008

It might be a bit uncouth, or in poor taste to post on my personal only kind of themed definitely sort of irrelevant blog about my gramma's death. But I don't care. She died not unexpectedly at the end of August and I miss her. Here is what I read at her memorial, and above is a picture of her that was in her newspaper obituary. I think it's kind of a weird picture, but it is one she really liked of herself.

The summer before I went to college, I met my gramma in Aspen for the chamber music festival. We spent five crazy, stressful, but mostly wonderful days together. That year in my writing classes at school, I wrote a short story about our vacation. I’m going to read an excerpt from the story—a bit from the middle, and then the end. It’s not quite linear and a bit disjointed, but please bear with me. I’m picking up at a part during which I’ve just biked into town from our condo.

In front of Dior, I locked up the bike next to expensive and gorgeous mountain bikes from Italy. I wanted ice cream and to play in the street fountain like I had when I was six. My dad had splashed in the fountain with me that day; he’s always been the sort of father who doesn’t mind getting messy or looking foolish while playing with children, his own or otherwise. My grandmother is the same way, and I knew if I asked her, even
when I was nine, or eleven, too old to get in the fountain, she’d have come anyway.
I stopped at Clark’s on the way back to pick up more wine, bananas, English muffins, coffee filters, a sling in a size large, and some magazines. Pedaling back up the hill was difficult with my grocery bags balanced on the bike’s handlebars.
Neighbors were fixing hamburgers on the grill when I got back, and I heard kids splashing in the pool, but in our apartment it was quiet, except for the drip of the humidifier, which sounded a long way off in the next room.
“Gramma?” I called, not very loudly. She was asleep, where I had left her. I stood over her and noticed that her eyes were opened slightly, and that I could see little slits of glassy blue. She breathed slowly through her nose and was snoring slightly. Her hair, dyed strawberry blonde and so much thicker than mine, was freshly cut, styled and perfect. Her nose is my dad’s, with a bump on the middle. My sister will have the nose too, in four or five years. The three of them look alike, but I look like my mother.
I studied my grandmother’s still face and thought she was beautiful. Her mascara was slightly smeared, and the ends of her hair curled around her chin; she looked so lovely, lying on her back and snoring.
She had sprayed her perfume, and I put my face into the bedclothes that smelled like her. My gramma wears a lot of perfume; whenever she comes to stay, the whole house smells like her for at least a week after she leaves. From the nightstand, I dabbed it on the insides of my wrists and brought them to my face periodically for the rest of the evening.
I was pulling my pajama pants on when my grandma knocked on my door.
“Del, what do you say we make a trip to the Little Nell? For martinis and oysters?”
She was dressed in a dark blue dress closer to royal in color than navy, Ferragamo shoes, a very nice Hermes scarf, and went bare-legged. It was summer in Colorado, she said, and nylons wouldn’t be necessary. We both put on lipstick (hers coral and mine hot pink) and decided to walk there. Downtown was still fairly busy; it was a Saturday night in a tourist town, at the end of the season, and most of the hotel rooms were full.
“Do you think jeans are OK for the Little Nell?” I asked my grandmother.
“Oh, sure.” Flick of the wrist. “It’s a bar. A very nice bar, but a bar. We used to stay at the Little Nell, in the old days.”
We sat at a table by the window.
“Oh, waiter?” my grandmother trilled, fluttering her fingers. Her hands gleamed with rings and bracelets.
“Two vodka martinis, please. And a dozen oysters.”
We sipped our martinis together. I tried not to wince, while she let hers roll around in her mouth and down her tongue slowly. Our oysters came and we both slurped them from their shells, covered in lemon juice and dotted with horseradish.
“The first time I had a raw oyster was in San Francisco,” I said, “when we were there for Bruce and Lynn’s wedding. We were having dinner at some place down by Fisherman’s Wharf and you made me try one.”
I don’t think she knew how glad I was, how secretly special I felt that I was drinking martinis with her, that I would be able to tell this story at family gatherings fifteen years later. It was a strange sort of premature nostalgia, brought on because for five days in August she was all mine.
We sat quietly. I ran my finger, dipped in water, around the rim of my glass, making a high, resonant note sound, until I realized it wasn’t appropriate, even if we were among the last people in the bar. It was a classic hotel bar, with large red leather chairs and mahogany paneling and ashtrays for old men’s cigars. It was almost empty except
us; it wasn’t the sort of place one went to dance or get drunk on a Saturday night. My grandmother stood up delicately in her black heels.
I took her hand as we walked out of the Little Nell. When I was younger, my gramma never made me hold her hand, but I liked to anyway. People watch her when she walks, and I really don’t think she’s ever noticed. She’s not the sort of woman who bothers with other people’s glances. She grew up thinking she was ugly because of her red hair, which makes her less vain than she might be otherwise.
“Mon Dieu! Those oysters were exquisite, weren’t they, dear?” My grandmother says ‘Mon Dieu’ instead of ‘Oh my God’ because she thinks it makes her sound continental. And it does.
The concierge tipped his head at her and said “Good evening, madam,” as we left the hotel. She smiled, and inclined her head.