My Grandma Rubie

EDITOR'S NOTE: I wrote this in late June last year, right after my grandmother passed. As I usually do, I wrote it later in an evening and left it saved to edit again before posting. Well, this one slipped past and I didn't go back and post it amidst a hectic summer. My apologies for the lateness. She knew such things happen.

My Grandmother Rubie (my dad's mom) passed away on the 20th of this month [June, 2017]. Whether you knew her or not, I'd like to share some reflections I have on her life, my experiences with her, and her effects on my rather small family. This last week has been emotional, and the silver lining of seeing someone close pass is the gathering of family and friends.

I am the youngest of my siblings (two sisters) and younger than my two cousins on my dad's side. These cousins grew up in Bozeman and spent summers with their parents, my family, and my grandparents. My Grandma had naturally always been the matriarch of the family, but after my Grandpa Jim passed away in 1995, she became even more central to the family. Until the early-2000s or so, most ranch business was done at her house. Because her house was next to the corrals and barn, all the lunches for brandings, shippings, and other day-works were always there, and of course, so was she.

I have plenty of good memories with her one-on-one, something any grandchild should feel lucky to say. Being the youngest, I got to spend days with her before I was kindergarten age, while my sisters were off to school and both my parents were making livings. In middle school she was especially supportive with my music education and got me to many fiddle lessons.

I came back to the ranch every summer in college, and preferred to stay in the bunkhouse, a former ice-house turned meat cooler turned single room bachelor ranch hand shack, and was fed well by her while living there. She cooked me many a pancake on miserably, unfairly cold and wet June mornings spent out irrigating, and her kitchen was always cozy. She would rarely be caught without a dessert in her kitchen, and was sure you'd gotten plenty. Whether it actually helped or not, I liked being able to check in on her often, though it probably worked the other way round. We always seemed to be on the same team.

While I was in Iowa, her health slowly declined. I am grateful to have been in Montana this last year and to have gotten more time with her. I'd last seen her a couple weeks prior to her going, and I'm so glad I told her I loved her before we left. I also feel grateful for being with my parents and aunt and uncle the day it happened, just to have been there.

We cleaned out her house before it came down of course, and shared what treasures we found in it with her while we could. Our house is being built at this moment on the site of her old house, and now we move onward with the new.