Goodbye Granny....

granny
Originally uploaded by Xose.

Well, tonight I got some very sad news. My grandmother, Charlotte, passed away tonight.

My granny was a heck of a lady. She's in most of my best childhood memories: the trips in the back of the car going to Myrtle Beach, cutting out construction-paper bats and pumpkins to tape to the windows at Halloween, roasting marshmallows over the gas burner at her house, even showing me how to build a little house out of rocks and moss for my army men when I was seven or so.

A couple of years ago I interviewed her and made a little documentary video of her memories. It was a big hit in my family and she was so proud of it. She said she was now a "movie star." The story was a compelling one: She grew up pretty poor in the coal mining region of West Virginia, but she made it through even the toughest of times after my grandpa, a miner, died when my mom was a baby. She re-married a Hungarian man, and she told me great stories about having to slaughter 10 chickens in a night to feed all her company on weekends because "my cooking was so good!" :-)

I'm so happy that she got to meet Jenny (and loved her a lot), and that she knew that we are going to have a baby.

I'll miss you granny. I love you very much.