20 YEARS

Tomorrow is December 23, 2010.  20 years since Viola Matilda Lilian (Ole Tilly Lilly according to her) left this world for the other side.  The woman who invented laughter and created a legacy of glorious stories, nonsense, silliness, love, acceptance and laughter for everyone who ever crossed her path.  My Grandmother.  Gramma.

It seems forever since I sat with her although I've felt her presence innumerable times since her passing.  She visits me.  Not like the ghost of Christmas past but as a feeling.  I know when I'm being who she would want me to be...that person is myself.

When I'm talking to a plant and scolding it for being uncooperative, I suddenly feel that way I felt when she was standing beside me.  When I collapse in laughter and have to wipe my eyes again and again I hear her raucous cackle (a laugh we girls all inherited...completely unfeminine and awesome) and know she gave me that ability.

So many people can't do that, you know.  Completely lose it in laughter.  I remember one comedy class when every one of us got so caught up in laughing that we actually just stopped the class because we all just kept looking at one another and laughing at the other one laughing...just like in the living room of Gramma's house, with Dad and Mom and Uncle Bobby and Gramma and all of us telling stupid stories or laughing about anything that struck us at the moment.

I am thankful for so many gifts that have been given to me in my lifetime.  My parents were teachers and gave me my love for learning.  My brothers and sisters have given me endless gifts. I have friends of every race, color and creed from all over the country and even the world and they have given me gifts that I can't begin to list. I'm grateful that I was raised in a spiritual home because even though I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I have a connection with my God and Jesus will always be a mentor. I like that Buddha guy too...I'd like to get a piece of that calm in my life ...perhaps a goal for next year.

All the gifts are wonderful and become essential at the times that I need them...but I have to say that if one thing has saved me throughout my life, in sickness and health and pain and good times and bad times and all the in between it's the rowdy, raucous, irreverent, bawdy, crazy, loud laughter that I inherited from my Grandmother...Viola Matilda Lilian...Ole Tilly Lilly...to say rest in peace would be a travesty.  Keep shaking the Heavens, Gramma!  We'll have one Heaven of a laughter reunion one day...and as the universe goes, it's only a moment away.  Oh, how I love you.