Grandma and Her Small Black Notebook

It will be eight years in June that she passed away. Eight long, lonely years without her. Her name was Angeline but she was known by Julia or Julie. I’m not quite sure why but this was common in her large Italian family. Each of her siblings were also known by a name other than their given name. I asked her about this many times. She lived until the age of 101 so we had many conversations about her life. She said that her mother could not speak English well but that explanation never made much sense to me. Why would someone give their children names they couldn’t pronounce regardless of how well they could speak English? But that was Grandma Julie, a fun loving, always entertaining grandmother. Her stories were always interesting and probably mostly truthful with a little bit of exaggeration thrown in for fun.

I was always close to my grandmother and when my grandfather passed away I moved in with her and became her caretaker although she was pretty much independent the majority of her life. I went to work during the day and took care of her when she needed me. I would have liked to have had a camera in the house to see what she was doing all day long while I was at work. When I was home I caught her doing so many things that were dangerous for a person of her age so I can only imagine what she was doing when I wasn’t around. Gram was a little secretive or should I say sneaky but her attitude was that it was her life and she could do whatever she wanted!

One day I came home from work to find her black and blue from head to toe. She told me she tripped in our house and fell. She acted like it was no big deal. I knew she was up to something because after being around her for so long I could tell when she wasn’t being truthful. Most times I just pretended I didn’t know she was lying but this time it was dealing with her health so I pressed her to tell me what really happened. As it turns out, she had been walking to my father’s house, who lives in the house next door, to do his laundry and his laundry room has a concrete floor which became slippery when wet. She spilled water on the floor and slipped and fell on the concrete floor. That is how she got all those black and blue marks. To this day I will never understand how she did not break a bone. Of course, she was well into her 90’s and was not supposed to be walking to my father’s house in the first place. I assured her that I would do my father’s laundry but she was not one to listen and I am certain she was walking to his house to do his laundry the very next day probably as soon as my car left the driveway.

My grandmother loved my father so much and after my mother passed away she was determined to take care of him regardless of her age. She even stood at the ironing board for hours ironing his clothes. Gram would take a little bottle of water with her because she would get thirsty standing at the ironing board for so long. That little plastic bottle is still in that same spot today. The funny thing is that my father did not have an office job so he didn’t need dress clothes for work but she still ironed all his clothes, including his torn, stained work clothes. As you can see, she was a very strong willed woman so it really didn’t matter what I or anyone else wanted her to do.

Speaking of strong willed, we had a dog who we both loved dearly and he passed away. I wanted another dog but since I was at work all day I needed to make sure it was okay with her. Gram said she would agree to get two dogs but with one condition. We must name the new additions Cosmas and Damian! Many people have probably never heard of the name Cosmas and most certainly there aren’t many dogs with those names, as my sister pointed out. Well I knew better than to argue with my grandmother so shortly thereafter we had two new puppies named Cosmas and Damian. Gram loved both dogs but she had a special attachment to Damian. When I would come home from work I would often find them snuggling on the couch. Damian lived six years after my grandmother passed away and although I was devastated when he died I knew deep down he went to Heaven to be with my grandmother. In case you are wondering, Cosmas is still here with me today.

The longer I lived with my grandmother the more stories she would tell me and the more information she would share with me about her life. But she always withheld information from me, which I somehow knew. In the house she would keep plain white envelopes with varying amounts of money in each one of them. Some of the envelopes had my father’s name carefully written on them. My grandmother called my father “her Tommy”. She would give him some money when he came to visit or sometimes she would give a few dollars to her great grandchildren. Although it was never spoken, I knew if she passed away she wanted the money in those envelopes to go to my father. I helped her pay her bills but she always wanted a certain amount of cash and she didn’t want me knowing how much she had because that was her business! I figured it was her way of keeping some independence. So I never had any idea how much cash she was accumulating.

As my grandmother got older and couldn’t walk up and down the steps anymore she lived on the first floor of our house. I was able to move through all three floors of the house freely but I did not go through her personal items unless she asked me for something. Gram was very protective of my father and always made sure he was taken care of pretty much up until her death. My father was independent and was capable of taking care of himself but he always did anything she asked so to show her appreciation she was determined to always take care of him.

After my grandmother passed away I continued to live in our house. I still did not look through all her personal belongings for many years. It just felt better to leave things as she left them. Now many years later I have slowly been looking through her personal items and I have found so many interesting things. Pictures of relatives I have never seen before, newspaper clippings and other interesting information. In the back of my mind I have always wondered if maybe there was something in the house she wanted me to find but I just put off looking for anything for all these years. Gram always had a notebook next to the couch with prayers carefully written down or other information she wanted to remember. One of her white envelopes with money was usually with that notebook. She even kept a dictionary next to the couch to look up the definitions or the spelling of words. It always surprised me that at her age she was still interested in knowing such information!

Recently one night when I could not sleep I decided to continue looking through Gram’s things and at the very bottom of a cabinet in her bedroom she had tucked a small black notebook. I have no idea when she put it there because I didn’t think she could walk up the steps to the second floor of our house for a few years before her death. It looked very similar to the one she kept by the couch. I expected to find the usual information in this notebook, like prayers, notes or her spelling words. But to my surprise when I opened this small black notebook she had written on the first page “Tommy” and inside was an Italian prayer card of Saints Cosmas and Damian, a little piece of Damian’s brown curly fur and $20,000 cash! It is so ironic how everything came together that night because I knew how much she loved my father, who by the way was named Cosmas Thomas by my grandmother’s father, and she always saved her money for him and then to top it all off there was a piece of Damian’s fur. So right there in front of me were the things most dear to my grandmother in her life: her son “Tommy”, Saints Cosmas and Damian, her best friend Damian and $20,000 for my father because she ALWAYS looked after him...I guess in life and now even in death.