self portrait tuesday – personal history

So, i was looking at my account and realized that i have 27 unpublished entries. This one is four years old. I have grown in so many ways since. I have become a better writer, but i like the essence of this one. Tomorrow i will have my first ever contest, to give away a mondo beyondo dream. Please come back if you need to dream.
This is my grandma thea taken in 1939, two years after my mom was born. My mom was the youngest of three girls – i'm not sure if my grandma had siblings. My mom named me after her mom and dad – her dad was thomas jess and mom was dorothea – i am jess thea.
My grandma was, without hesitation, the strongest female figure in my life. She was tough and self-sufficient, yet womanly and warm and motherly. During the war her husband was gone for seven years. Seven years. I can't even imagine. Instead of hiding in loneliness she joined the british red cross as an ambulance driver and continued to raise and support her three daughters plus various boarders.
Boarding strangers became a habit of my mothers that always led to much fun and hijinx.
When my grandparents moved their family to canada after the war they took on many forms of employment – always as a team. I loved that about them. They were realtors – he the agent she the secretary, turkey farmers. Yes turkey. Eventually they moved to vancouver, i think to be near us but who knows? They owned a hardware store in Coquitlam. I loved visiting the store and spending hot summer days sitting at the counter as people filed in all day to buy a fan, trolling the aisles and fingering the barrels of nails and screws or the giant spools of different ropes and twines. I remember a small toy aisle that i would wander endlessly eyeing up the pogo stick that i saved for a whole year to purchase for $12.
As my grandma aged she grew away from my grandpa and eventually they moved into seperate old age homes. His was lonely and desperate. While hers was more like florida. Bus trips to the beauty salon, days at the mall, nights of poker, girlfriends and gossip. She was so happy then. As age took it's toll she lost both her legs to blood clots, but kept on going right till she died. Essentially, of old age. She died while i was pregnant with my first child, tristan. Tristan shares our name, she is tristan thea.
We didn't have a funeral. We met as a family at my moms house and took my grandmas ashes up to the top of grouse mountain. My sister and i spread the ashes and planted some snow drops and everybody drank gin and tonics. I only had a small sip because i was 8 months pregnant, but it was nice and magical in some ways.
I miss her. So does my mom. We both planted lilac trees in our yards to help us remember her. The snow drops still grow up there too. I visit sometimes.