Grandma Myrtle

On Sunday, January 7th, Myrtle Kleaver passed away. She was my grandmother, my mom's mom.



She'd been battling health problems for some time, moving from assisted living to rehab and back again ever since she left her Minnesota home to get care in Alabama. She was 91.

I remember her as smart, funny, and tough in a no-BS sort of way. She was to me the prototype Minnesota Scandanavian matron, working hard every day in her garden and in her house, cooking old-timey northerner food, shoveling snow, knitting and crocheting blankets that I still lie under on the couch most nights.

To me she is a collection of sounds and smells as well as a steadfast image. Her big old musty house in Waverly, MN, the blankets that still carry the million smells of her home, the creaking of the tight spiral staircase going up to her attic, the quaver in her voice as she puzzled through an explanation ("er, um-a-num"), the lilt of her laugh when you were lucky enough to get her going. She had pointy-ended eyeglasses, of course, and her eyes behind them twinkled, as all good grandmother eyes should.



As kids, visits to her house as a kid were wonderful vacations. We'd roll down the three-tiered hill in her yard over and over, climbing back up the cinder block stairs each time to run over and do it again. They were just up the hill from a lake, and days would melt by in the sprints to and from the water. We'd swim, ski, fish, and swim some more, taking breaks only when we had to run up the hill for food or bed.

Her husband, Ray Kleaver, died when I was a senior in college, 1991. I remember that I took it hard. I was in finals, and I had no money, and I couldn't get back to Minnesota for the funeral. I don't know that I've ever forgiven myself for that.

And I find that now, this many years later, even after the trials she's gone through for months into years, even knowing that her health has been failing and that this end was a matter of how much time, this is very hard to bear. It hits me at weird times, mostly when I'm alone and thinking of something else entirely. The feeling rushes in like floodwater and fills my head, and before I know it I'm a sore-throated, weepy mess.

This Friday I'll fly out from home in Boise to Minneapolis, where I and my brother John will get a car and head to Buffalo to my Aunt Kris and Uncle Milt's house. We offered to get a room, but it seems more right to pile in on relatives' couches and floors, just like we always did. It seems like forever since I've been there.

We grow up and move and build lives and before you know it, we're all older, we're spread far and wide, and we begin the ritual of seeing each other only for weddings and funerals. It's a shame, but it's a process old as the family itself.

But, for this weekend, we'll gather together to remember Myrtle Kleaver. She was my grandmother, and she was a wonderful person. She is missed.