Amanda

Meme

read by Amanda:

          
       My grandmother who I call Meme is someone I loved and still do to this day even though she is not alive. I wanted to be with her every day. If I didn’t ride the bus up to her house after school, I would call her at seven pm and ask for her to come get me. If she wouldn’t come, my Mom and Dad would bring me up. If she would tell me, “No, not tonight” I would cry and cry until she told me “Yes”. That always worked. I would sleep with her in her room. I would cuddle with her every night because it was a safe feeling to me. I often felt uneasy at night. Meme would wake me up in the morning for school, I would take a shower and get ready then eat breakfast with my Meme.  “Time to go up to the bus stop”, so my Mom would drive me up there and I would wait in the car until the bus came. I would kiss her goodbye, get out of the car and on o the bus then off to school. Starting my day with Meme always made it a bit easier.

 Every Wednesday night Meme and I would go to bingo in Bristol. She would pick me up in her car and we would head to town. It was about a seven minute drive. When we got there we would go in, put our stuff down at the table, (we always sat at the same one) and then it was time buy our tickets. After we bought our tickets, we set our tickets up how we liked them.  There was a routine to how we set it all up. I knew where to place the cards and how to set out each of our special ‘nick-knacks’. It was only cards, numbers and calling things out loud but I felt safety and love in those bingo games. There was even a way to end each night. We packed all our things up and when we got to Meme’s house we would put our bingo bags away. With Meme, there was always a right place for everything. We would get ready for bed then sit on the couch and watch TV, close to each other and then we would head to bed.

When Meme passed my Mom and I kept going to bingo to keep her alive. But bingo stopped in Bristol. When my Mom and I have extra money, we’ll go to bingo in Middlebury. I pulled out the bingo cards and set them up like I used to with my Meme. It was good and right to be there, but not the same. My Meme was my hero. She was my best friend and she was a second Mom to me. I loved her a lot and I still think of her every day. As the years pass, how do I keep her alive? How do I keep the time we had together fresh in my memory? How do I celebrate my graduation with her? It’s hard to explain but as I get older, I appreciate her even more. I love you Meme, and miss you so much.