Tab, you’re it

The new tab will be a salute to sodas that aren’t around anymore, Pepsi Light, Aspen, Nesbitt’s.

I would gladly trade Tuesday a Brew 102 for a Tab today.

My last remaining grandparent is dying, now. She’s had a series of progressively more catastrophic strokes, over the last three days and hasn’t, and very likely won’t regain any semblance of consciousness. Her advance directive indicates she doesn’t wish to be kept alive with tubes and machinery; it’s being honored.

I’ve been trying to write this letter to a friend, but the words won’t come, so I’m trying here. I’ve seen
people do this over the years, and it feels right, somehow, even though she was an unrepentant Twins fan (and was rather cruelly dismissive of Eric Gagne; she said saves were a made-up statistic, and that, anyway, everybody knows Joe Nathan is better).

Susan Shimmin was born on a farm in North Dakota, the oldest daughter of twelve children. Her mother
didn’t believe in education for girls, but she did, and she became an RN by way of the Army, during World War Two. She married my grandfather and didn’t divorce him when he was stationed in Alaska, even though it was Alaska. They raised four children in Minnesota, even though it was Minnesota. Their kids got post-secondary educations. Even the girls.

My grandfather died twenty years ago. They’d always planned to travel, once they retired, but he didn’t
make it. She’s told me a few times, that, when he died, she was angry at him for leaving her alone. He was conscious and present, till near the end of his life, though it was clear what was coming. He taught
her how he did the bills (that had been his responsibility in their division of labor), how all of their investments worked, how to take care of a car. In the weeks before he died, he kept planning to buy a
new car for her. A Cadillac. He’d always wanted one, and he wanted her to have one, after he was gone.

She bought a Buick, after he died, because it was more sensible. But she did travel. She wanted to see
the trees in New England, in the fall, and she did. She went to London and Paris, and took a cruise through Greece, all in her 70’s and 80’s.

She spent, I think, three years (it may only have been two) of her retirement in North Platte, Nebraska,
caring her parents, as they declined and died. Her father lived to be 101; he was bumped from Al Roker’s birthday wishes because even older people shared his birthday. Her mother passed her final years having
strokes and becoming increasingly unpredictable an combative.

When my cousin was married in Italy, last year, I help-desked my grandmother through downloading and
playing the wedding pictures flash-video. Every time I sent her an email (I wish I’d made more time for this), she responded within a day, from her dial-up AOL account.

For many years, she’s walked to the gym (even in the Winter, in Minnesota) to swim. Didn’t drink, though she did accept a champagne flute the night of my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. She had knee (and then hip) replacement surgeries, which meant that every time she flew anywhere, she was treated to secondary security screening. I was there, once; she was kind to the TSA agent. She had a heart attack, four years ago, and, even though much of it was stupid, she went along with the rehab program.

She made the best pie I’ve ever had and she had the worst singing voice I’ve ever heard: thin, piercing, and
worbley. She had absolutely no sense of humor about her Governor Ventura. She made every quilt I’ve slept under; I suspect that’s true of each of her eight grandchildren.

She’s dying now, in a hospital in St. Paul. There’s not a single thing I can do to ease her way, but, attention must be paid and all that. The world will be immeasurably poorer for her passing.

Reading the thread, it’s very nice seeing some old friends.

I can’t wait until football season is over.

That Clint Eastwood commercial was excellent.

Thanks to everyone who read my brick of prose, and to those who responded.