The last time I saw

The last time I saw Granny, she was baking a pecan pie for the church's Fall open house. As always, she shelled the pecans, made the crust, mixed the gelatin, baked the pie herself. All from scratch, all by hand. That's how they did things in Ireland, she said, when her grandmother came over to this country. None of this ready-made or to-go stuff for her, she said. How easy it'd be been for her to say, "Aw, the hell with it. I'll just get a pie from Whole Foods." But no, she had to do it herself -- right up to her 90th birthday. This year, we had a big party for her on her birthday at the beginning of May -- Mother's Day it was this year.

Granny gave me an earful that day in the Philadelphia kitchen where she'd ruled with an iron hand since 1946. Even if she'd broken her hip back in the winter and now walked with a cane, she soldiered on, maneuvering back and forth between the counter, the refrigerator, the stove, as she bickered and berated me for screwing up my job. Didn't know why in the world I'd quit a perfectly good job just to play guitar in a band for a year. She was right of course -- as always. I hated that she was always right! Just once, I wanted her to be wrong about something. And I suppose that's why I told her to go jump in a lake and left in a huff -- without even saying goodbye.

You'd think a 39-year old former financial analyst would be more grown-up about his 90-year old grandmother, right? Wrong. So I resolved to go back over there tomorrow and say I was sorry.

I got a call from Geraldine the following afternoon. When Granny didn't answer her phone that morning, my younger sister went over to the house and found her. She slept away during the night. Eight pecan pies on the kitchen counter, every one of them covered by a neatly cut piece of wax paper, ready to go to St. Mark's for today's open house. Everything in Granny's life in good order. All set for the next world.