John Burridge

This was my Grandmother's charm bracelet. When she traveled, she'd get a little charm from the place she visited and added it to the links. I'm not sure when the custom of charm bracelets started, but I'm guessing it died out in the late sixties, as the last charms were acquired then.

Her birthday's in a few weeks; she died when she was 99, and would have been 101 this year.

After visiting Grandma's and the family gravesites, I had a Tim Burton moment where I found an old Christmas Tree in the graveyard.

I decided that I needed to make a Viking Ship to say goodbye to Grandma. (I think if we'd been able to be at her grave site I'd feel less strongly.) So I gathered craft tools. After about ninety seconds of research, I decided to make a keeled and clinkered hull "dragon ship." I figured I'd forgo cutting out cardboard planks and use a sheet for each side of the hull.



For the keel, I cut out identical shapes and glued them together to hide the cereal box printing. I also cut out some dragon shapes for the head. I didn't want to paint the ship, so I relied on different layers to get the idea across.

As I was cutting out the shapes, I remembered all the Viking decor she used to have around her Ash Street house -- mostly pewter longboats. I'm trying to remember if she used to wear a Thor's hammer (I think it was called a "Norwegian" or "Viking" cross at the time) or if that was one of her friends.



At first I thought I'd be able to use thwarts to help give the ship a classic longboat shape, but they didn't really work. If I'd had more time (and patience) I suppose I would have built the ship the proper way, as it took about an hour of fiddling with the cardboard hull to get it to stay ship-shaped.

Typically, there was a Wagner soundtrack going on in my head.



After gluing the wrong shape sides to the keel, I ended up trimming the excess cardboard from the hull off (while it was still attached to the front of the keel under the dragon's head). I used some heavy clips to keep the hull halves in place along the keel while the glue dried.

For some reason I kept going back to Grandma's Ash Street house in my mind. She used to have a windowsill of knick-knacks, mostly ceramic owls that at one time had been filled with skin product. For some reason I remembered her in one of her lavender sweaters (with a braided knit going down the front).


To widen the boat, I ended up putting a kind of thwart system in post-hull-construction. For my purposes (having a boat that would float long enough to be a virtual pyre), it worked; but if I wanted an actual floating model I would have sectioned the hull more. I added some ballast (big old nails) along the keel to keep the boat upright in the water.



Once the boat was glued together, I used some duct tape along the bottom to keep the hull parts attached to the keel while I widened the boat more with some more thwart parts. The tape kept the boat from leaking too terribly. I also cut out some shields and a picture of Grandma. In this picture, she's drinking her second-favorite social drink, Scotch (I think her last drop of the stuff was when she was 95 or 96). Her favorite drink was probably "half a cup of coffee (but only if you're getting up)."


I put some paper bits into the boat, filled up a wading pool, placed the boat in the water, and lit it. My inner pyromaniac would have liked bigger flames (I couldn't find any rubbing alcohol), but I think it was more in Grandma's character the way the flames quietly and efficiently consumed what needed to go.

"Goodbye Grandma," I whispered. The boat sank quickly into the cold water with a hiss.

I'm back safe and sound after gallivanting all across Oregon. Most of the driving was done by others.

Grandma's internment service was... interesting. Astoria received about four inches of rain (and about eight since the start of the month), so her grave site was full of water. The original plan had been to bury her, but it would have been sort of a burial at sea if we had tried. So the service was at the mortuary (sort of at the last minute).

I hadn't realized how much reading Alison Bechdel's Fun Home has affected me (her book is an autobiography and her father was a part-time mortitian). I started looking at all the large doors and panels and wondered which one held the embalming studio and which one opened onto the back end of a hearse. I had hoped that the telephone ringer would be turned off (it went off during the sermon) but the sound of a power saw brought to mind someone having to "arrange" a body in the back rooms. ("Joe, this arm needs to bend so the flowers will be held right; hand me that Black & Decker...") So start with the sound of power tools and add my Grandma's name, "Agnes" leading to "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem" (no, it was a Lutheran service, ) and suddenly I've got Mary's little lamb in my head. (Don't worry, I'm used to odd notions colliding in my head like this.) And P.D.Q. Bach's "Anges and her sister Dorris Dei" lurking in the sub-processes of my thoughts.


After hearing the sermon today, there are two stories about my Grandma that I want to share.

When I was a twenty-something, I liked to wear my "seal of Reed College" T-shirt, which is a griffin wearing boxing gloves surrounded by the motto: "Communism, Atheism, Free Love." When Grandma saw it, she was dismayed (moreso than I had intended) and exclaimed (to my surprise) "Atheism? Oh no!" (I thought it would have been the "Free Love.")

Years later, my sister and I were driving with my Grandmother. I forget exactly how we got on the subject, but Grandma declared, "I don't understand how the same God of love can go around telling people to kill other people; it's doesn't make sense and it's just wrong."

This is really weird.

My first photograph to ever be published in a newspaper is for my Grandmother's obituary. You'd think I'd be used to having my photos made public à la the web, but seeing her photo on a newspaper site, cropped to a head shot, feels emotionally dislocating. (And by this, I mean that it feels like words about somebody else next to a picture of a stranger.) For one, I guess I've gotten used to my text accompanying my photos. For another -- I guess it's just weird to read about a relative in the past tense. And obituaries leave so much out because they're so plug-and-play; I just read someone else's obituary and it's virtually the same wording -- so I the writer in me wonders what the untold story is.

OK. I take that back; I'm starting to contrast and compare different obituaries and it's interesting to see the differences.

I think I'll stop now.

Things here are kind of calm on the Grandma Front. I created a Google Map for family and friends to drop markers with memories of her. My Mom and I spent some time trying to find the old Farmstead where she was born. There's an old family graveyard (pioneer style), but the location is written in terms of plats and headings, not GPS coordinates, so that one's proving harder to place.

I thought I might have a dream about Grandma, but instead I had a dream about elevators (always a bad sign of anxiety) and certain irritating people invading my space. Friday night (the night Grandma died) I had three dreams which I was going to post anyway....


The first was a kind of video documentary that started out with some people I know. Anyway all sorts of antics were going on and then I'd walk out of (my old house on Adams) and do normal mundane things (like walking around and pulling the occasional weed) completely unaware of the circus.


The second was more Arthurian. A bad noble had imprisoned King Arthur within a circle of twelve long swords. Because it was a dream, the swords started out being under white circular pavillion but later it seemed as if the sword circle were in a stone tower. The swords themselves reminded me of the swords from the Rider Waite tarot deck -- they were shiny, long, with large hilts.

King Arthur was a little cold, and had a fire of about three lumps of coal with him within the circle. But the bad noble (rather Scrooge like) only brought him enough coal (usually a lump or two) to keep a small fire going.

The King and I looked out a window and saw the Pearwood Pipers (a music group I play harp in) riding beneath the tower. The bad noble had caused a crevasse to open up and they had to urge their horses to jump over the crevasse. One of them didn't quite make it, and was stuck. This was part of the noble's plan (although I'm not sure how catching traveling musicians furthered his goals...)


The third dream was a kind of 1960's World of Tomorrow. I walked into a room that in waking reminds me of my parent's living room. Only with more chrome and glass. And lots of white fabric. A virtual hostess appeared on a giant glass screen (where the fireplace would be in real life). She reminded me vaguely of Shirley Bassy. She wore a white body suit with various bands of black on her arms and legs (remember, this was the 1960's, so it was supposed to look futuristic). It's possible that some of her bands weren't black, and were mylar. I also have the impression that vinyl spheres, cubes, and pyramids were sown onto her suit around the upper torso area (no, *not* in a Tank Girl or Madonna kind of way).

The guests arrived. White fabric fluttered. Martinis, daiquiris and margaritas flowed. There was clever conversation. I think somehow the virtual hostess and I got into some kind of argument... less rock-em-sock-em and more debate. My closing argument was to say something like, "But you're just a program," pick up a dark remote, aim it at the screen, and turn it off.

My Grandmother died last night. She had celebrated her 99th birthday last September. My favorite stories about her:

She used to tell us about her dog, Sport, "who wasn't afraid of man or beast" quite a bit.

About twelve years ago, she wasn't feeling so well. So she hopped into her car and drove the eight or so blocks to the local hospital. She went to the emergency room and they told her, "Mrs. Jeppesen, you're having a heart attack." I think she was something like 86.

Once I saw a ceramic coffee mug that had been "sliced" down the center, with the caption "half a cup of coffee" in its glaze. I always thought it would be funny to get it for her because she was always Norwegian Polite (sort of a variation on the Jewish Grandmother) and never wanted anything unless you were getting up to get it anyway (and then it was always "oh, just half a cup").

The dream started out in an aquarium... or an ocean science movie. In any case, I was watching a hippo or a porpoise frighten a squid. The squid was a puffer-squid, and when it got frightened it would expand and a bunch of quills popped out of it. The hippo-porpoise was having a fun time frightening the puffer-squid. It got a little repetitive, with the hippo-porpoise popping out from behind a rock (in the lower left-hand field of vision) and frightening the puffer-squid (in the upper-right hand).

I think I said something about the aquatic scene looking like a ballet, and suddenly, Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty" overture played and I was choreographing three ballerinas. They were traipsing in front of a castle curtain wall toward a fourth, but it wasn't working quite right. The opening dance kept repeating as we tried to work it out. I think my old dance instructor, Pam Hoffbur, appeared at this point and we tried some other things.

I finally decided that we needed to rotate the castle forty-five degrees on the stage with the corner of the castle wall in the lower stage-right area. The lead male, hunched over a sketch of the set in the castle, came up with the same idea independently.

When Pam brought it up to the main theatre instructor, the two women got into a discussion of how the set needed to have a bridge in it so that the theatre instructor could use it for a production of "Waiting for Godot." (Although now that I think about it, it should have been a production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.")

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Saw Grandma today. Umm, wow; she's really thin -- I guess the last time I saw her she had a long-sleeved blouse on. She said she was fine the several times when I asked. I hope I didn't tire her out with reports from the outside world.

She'd just woken up from a nap when I arrived; so my attempts to get her speaking by asking her advice on things like gardening worked less well than they have in the past. She still has her humor and smiled when I said I was glad I had inherited Lillenas hair (I hope at 98 my hair looks half as great as hers does).

I think the next time I'm just going to bring the harp and not have one sided conversations.

I visited with my Grandmother the other day; I'd say it was a fair visit -- certainly not the worst, but I've seen her doing a lot better, too. I think part of the reason the visit was so unfocused was that:

1. I visited her around 2 PM (10 AM would have been better);
2. the folks at her foster home just moved her into a slightly larger room, so she was thrown a little about where she was (I hung up some of her pictures and I think that helped);
3. her medical folks recently decided that she didn't have enough oxygen in her bloodstream and hook her up to an oxygen tank (so she kept thinking it was her glasses); and,
4. as we were going through one of her photo albums, I realized how much I've aged in appearance over the last ten years (well, I'm gray haired, but at least I won't be bald).

I think she did appreciate the visit, but after about a half-hour I noticed that her gaze kept wandering.

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I think I need to manage my sleep more. Wednesday, I decided to put my keys, wallet, and cell phone in a vest instead of my bag. You guessed it, I left my vest hanging on a chair in a local establishment. Thursday I left a stack of photos for my mother by the computer instead of bringing them to her during my visit. For an encore, I locked my keys, wallet, and cell phone (in my bag this time) in the car (with the car running).

I'd like to blame the new moon, but I'm pretty sure it's skimping on sleep and not sticking to routines; I always do something stupid with my keys when I don't put them in my bag. Unfortunately, this may mean that I have to choose between keeping my keys or an Alzheimer's-lite life of sticking to routine.

Sigh. (Gads! Look how late it is; and I need to read my e-mail!)

I went to Corvallis to visit my folks and managed to chat with my grandmother.

At first, I didn't think it was going to be a good visit because she was napping when I arrived. But she perked up quite a bit and we had a conversation about quilting, gardening, and the latest doings of other family members. She remembered that I live in Eugene, which is a lot better than last time when I wasn't sure she remembered who I even was. I'd say the visit was a 4.5 out of 5. After about a half hour, when I started to bore her (or at least when her gaze began to wander all over the room), I ended the visit.

In writing news, I managed to re-work the begining of a short story which should clear up a bunch of questions readers had about the setting and characters. I still need to go through and make a pass for minor things and consistency. I really need to get this one out into the mail.

Today is a recover from the weekend day, and Arthur is helping me by taking a nap.

Saturday, Arthur and went to Corvallis to visit with my Grandmother. Unfortunately, she fell off of a couch and broke her femur. They've fixed it, but she'll be stuck in a wheelchair for a while. The nursing home she's at is a nice one, but I think they're a little understaffed. Arthur and I will have to go and visit again over the next few weeks.

After Corvallis, we went to a birthday party for Tesla. Although there weren't any telsa coils, our host, Eric, did have a Really Extensive Train set. I think Arthur was in heaven (at least while the trains ran). A Goodyear Blimp also flew close to Eric's house, and that was exciting, too. Arthur and I played croquet -- well, OK, Arthur wanted to eat the mallets and trip over the wickets.

If I had written a 1000 story involving tesla coils for the party, I would have read it; but I didn't (although I did come up with bits and pieces of a tesla coil story on the drive to Eric's house).

Sunday Arthur and I went to church while Mark scraped the house. When we came home, Mark took Arthur to the deep mosquito filled woods and I scraped the house.

Arthur, Mark and I went to Corvallis to visit with Grandma today. When we got to the nursing home parking lot, Arthur said "Maggie!" Mark and I spent a few moments trying to figure out Maggies in Arthur's life (OK, actually, I was trying to stop the replay of the really irritating Maggie May song by Rod Stewart that plays in my head whenever I hear the name...)

"Oh," Mark said. "Maggie the Beagle!" Arthur had met a Beagle last week when we were visiting Grandma and he was remembering the dog's name.

Grandma was the most lucid I've seen her in years (although she was sort of scooting around in the nursing home hallway in her wheelchair trying to figure out where her room was). We played a flashcard game with her; we'd give her a card with an animal on it and she was supposed to ask Arthur the name of the animal or what noise it made. Arthur got a little fixated on the owl, and said that cats go "whoo-whoo." He does know how to say "eagle," probably because eagles are on the sides of US Postal Trucks.

We visited for about an hour, then went and visited with my folks. They seemed to be in good spirits. I helped my dad move a chair to Grandma's new foster home while Mom and Mark watch Arthur re-arrange all the furniture on Mom's deck. Arthur got to feed Sierra the German Shepherd a dog treat, and generally lounged all over her. Other hightlights of the day included spotting two deer, a helicopter on a helipad outside Monmouth, and driving by Independence's really cool old bank.

We spent most of this weekend packing up Grandma's things for her move. We're not quite sure where she's moving to, but she can't stay at her current assisted living apartment. Mark was great -- we were originally planning to go for one day and he suggested that we pack a bag, 'just in case.' Good thing we were prepared for a second day; I'm afraid that I got a little distracted by the confirmation certificates written in Norwegian and all of Grandma's jewelry (and coats). It probably doesn't help that I secretly wanted to wear all of the jewelry and scarves that I've given her over the last decade.

So. Here's a tip for those of you with elderly relatives. Don't give them skin lotion. They don't use it, and it only piles up in scores of plastic bottles where it separates into different layers which then become growing mediums for various forms of anaerobic or fungal life. If you really want to give them something, help them dust -- or even better, just sit down with them and talk with them.

We did manage to visit with Grandma during all the packing. The nursing home she's at was having a group cherry pie bake on Saturday. We brought Arthur (who wasn't allowed to touch the floor) and you should have seen all the residents perk up. It's too bad they don't have a local preschool visit more often. Sunday was a little slower (we were over there earlier), but Grandma really woke up when we got her talking about dogs. She's got a dog puppet and she woke up even more when she made the dog bark for Arthur.

Arthur has some new friends at the local store: the Sushi Booth Ladies. Mark took him Saturday before we left for Corvallis and they awarded Arthur with some eel. Today when we went to go look at the chicken rotisserie there was more eel. I will have to learn how to say thank you in their language.

Later this morning I was trying to show Arthur the properties of circles by tracing them using an Aquadoodle Pad and an empty juice bottle.

John: "See, here's a circle. And you put the center of the bottle on the circle. And you drawn another circle."

Arthur (animated): "Ooh. Mmm." (reaches for Aquadoodle Pen)

John: "Hang on, let me draw one more circle." (Finishes three intertwined circles). "Here, you draw one. (Arthur takes pen) Now, the first two circles form a vesica piscis --

Arthur: (plunks pen into bottle) "Squeal!" (shakes pen up and down within bottle) "Out!" (slides pen out of bottle) "In!" (plunks pen back into bottle; shakes again).

John (shakes head): "Why God, why?"

Arthur has a cold. I had about a two day grace period and now I have a cold, too. Mark is healthy. The cold is not too bad; the only drawback is that Arthur has more energy than I do -- if it's not raining much today I think we'll go to the park down by the river and I'll let Arthur run around.

Grandma is in a nursing home / hospital. I saw her yesterday and she looked pretty well for a 98 year old with a new hip. She was in a wheelchair and dressed. We had short conversations while I played the harp for her. She liked the music, but after an hour she started to get fidgety. It was one of her lucid days (I've spoken to her on worse days) and she was more coherant than when I saw her last Sunday (right after her operation). Her short-term memory isn't too long, so she doesn't remember breaking her hip or having surgery to replace it.

The AntiValentines Party was small and fun. Mark Wild made a hilarious Donald Rumsfield series. In between making anti-valentines, Jenn, Kira, and Mali did tag-team Arthur watching. Mark Dwyer made wonderful spade-shaped sandwiches and was Kitchen God. I read poetry by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikubu to inspire everyone. Elyn and Eric brought a ton of craft supplies (and created a bear and rose -- ehem -- ensamble). Arthur wanted to do everything that the grown-ups were doing and in between that he wanted to eat the glue sticks.

Still no word on WOTF.

Just got back to Eugene from the hospital. Grandma is doing fine for a 98 year old woman who just got a hip replacement. The physical therapist had her stand and she could without too much pain. She also perked up quite a bit -- so much that the nursing staff gave her washcloths to fold so she wouldn't pull out her IV's (she either thinks they're her watch or bracelet). The unofficial best guess is that she'll be discharged Tuesday.

When I walked into Grandma's hospital room, the first thing I thought was, 'gee, Grandma is tiny.' She was asleep. A little later the nursing staff woke her when they checked one of the machines she was hooked to. They were great, and I could tell they were glad that I was there to ground Grandma with a "Hi Grandma, it's John; you're in a hospital in Corvallis. These nurses are here to take care of you."

I then spent about four hours playing a lap harp. I figured that Grandma would enjoy the music, and she did; I didn't realize how much the staff would, too. It really changed the energy of the room to something more relaxed and positive and I got to enjoy a Christine Lavin moment. Grandma dozed off and on; I'm always amazed at how friendly and happy she is, because I'd be afraid if a room full of strangers was taking my blood and blood pressure and pulse and EKG and I didn't know why my back hurt and I was in traction.

Grandma went into surgery for a hip ball replacement; she gets to keep her socket. The doctor said that she went through it really well and has a strong heart and lungs. Man, I hope I can do half as well as she does at her age.

We'll visit her tomorrow morning.

I just got a phone call. I was ripping out a small kitchen counter. Um... it wasn't WOTF. It was my mother. My grandmother, who was born in 1909, fell and broke her hip. She's comfortable now, and probably asleep (and in traction), but they're going to give her surgery to replace her hip sometime this afternoon. She's a tough little old lady, but I know that surgery at her age is risky. So, I anticipate spending time in Corvallis helping both my parents and my grandmother.

Time to light candles.