Edna T.

{my Grandma Tilley keepsake box}

One summer, when we were camping, Grandma Tilley casually mentioned to Mr. Keller over the campfire, that the Mexicans had taken over the Burley park. "No whites are allowed anymore," she said.
We had been married for six months. I think it's safe to say that that has been filed away as one of the more funny moments to come from my side of the family. (Though, there have been a few.)

Grandma Tilley was always present, sort of in the background, with her usual quiet, steady self. Not emotional, or affectionate or dramatic, really. Just factly and simple and there. Until quite quickly, one winter five years ago, she wasn't anymore. April 1st, she would have been ninety-six.

I've been missing her chocolate cake lately, and the silk quilt on the bed in her spare room and the way her house smelled like linen. The bouncy balls in her kitchen drawer, and her closet full of toys and her glass music box vase with peach flowers that sat in the curio by her front door.

I think I've thought more about her since her death, than I ever did while she lived. I've thought about what it could have meant to be born in 1915, in a farmhouse in Hayburn, and how she had nine siblings, and was the oldest of twin girls. Or how she had five children of her own, and three marriages, surviving an abusive, alcoholic husband, and another husband dying in World War II. I've thought about all the years she was willing, as a great grandma, to be such a part of my grandma glenna's family, how we were really the only great grandchildren that had a relationship with her. She went everywhere we went, to the Oregon Coast a million times, camping, to Utah. She was so independent and adventurous, always along for the ride.

Every now and then, when it's really loud, and we're eating good food, and my aunts are talking a mile a minute, and grandma glenna's talking over us all about Dr. Oz or Miss Cleo, and the kids are playing and whining and fighting, and then Jackie breaks into random song, and then everyone joins her, and it's so loud, but no one is really listening, I realize there is one less in our group of crazy, and it's the quiet one.

I miss her most in the background. It's like pausing in a fluttering room and noticing something is gone, but not knowing exactly what until you sit down and realize your heart's aching a little, and you're missing something you forgot wasn't there. That's what it's like missing grandma. Sometimes, if I don't look, I think she's still there.

Really, maybe she is.

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Edna Tilley loved walking, soap operas, rocking in her chair, writing in her journal, giving tight sqeezes, attending Saturday night dances, waking up early, and getting her hair done.

I loved her old rotary phone, her low voice, her story telling, and her homemade rolls. I loved her.