The Meme Today's prompt is from
thnidu: oops! Something's missing!
Content warning: grief, mourning, and loss.
This year, in addition to the little tin of cookies my aunt gives me every year, she gave me something I'd asked for a while ago - three recipe cards written in my grandmother's handwriting - and something I hadn't - the recipe for my grandma's Leb Kuchen cookies.
I cried.
I'm going to frame the recipes and hang them in my kitchen - I saw the idea on Pinterest, I think, but they'd been flea market finds. These are Grandma's, and there will never be anything like them again.
My maternal grandmother passed away when I was in my early twenties; I don't remember her last days very well, although I remember my now-husband, early in our relationship, being the lifesaver, standing behind me at that awful funeral. But I remember Grandma.
My dad worked days and my mom evenings, but the gap times, and when they were building the log cabin that was our home from 1981 on, I spent with my Grandma Dorie. She lived just around the corner - my parents' house and my aunt and uncle's house are built on parcels of land cut off from the family farm - within an easy walk, even for a small child.
My memories of Grandma are scattered - playing Uno, making cookies, watching Wheel of Fortune - but they are warm. And at Christmas time...
At Christmastime, something is missing, every year. I eat cookies made from her recipe and remember sitting in her lap.
"Got anything sweet, Grandma?"
"Just me."
*sniffle* She's what's missing, every year.
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