Lizzie- fat and sassy

Hi everyone,

So, unfortunately my update is quite sad. My grandmother died on Saturday. This was my mom’s mom, or Nanny to me. Like I said before, she had congestive heart failure and ended up not being able to breathe very well. It really ended up being a blessing because she was suffering. My parents were in Toronto for the weekend with friends and called me at work on Saturday morning. They ended up staying in Toronto for the weekend because my uncle told them they could set up stuff by phone and plus the plane ticket was $950 one way to come back early. Which meant, I was home alone because my brother was at school. Saturday night I was a mess and Katie, aka the “love brigade,” came over with Chinese food, an ice cream cake, chick flicks, and she spent the night at my house.

Monday I picked up my parents at the airport and we drove to my nanny’s house. I had been okay up until I was going through pictures of my grandmother’s wedding. I made a slideshow of pictures of her to Irish pub songs to have on my computer at the wake, and the pictures just overwhelmed me. As we were digging through stuff we found her certificate of naturalization when she became a citizen, which was really cool. She had written out a list of everything she wanted at her funeral: who she wanted to be pallbearers, what hymns she wanted sung and asked me to read a poem.

I have never been to a wake or funeral before and the open casket was kind of upsetting. I do have to say, as sad as these three days were, I also laughed a lot and learned a lot about my grandma and my mother. Example: apparently when Nanny was younger and people asked her how she was, she always responded with “fat and sassy.” So, when one of her nephews showed up at the wake, he told my mom that she has to be the new fat and sassy one now.

My mom had been calling her cousin, Maireed, in Ireland trying to get hold of her to tell her about Nanny and also to find out her cousin Danny’s number in NYC so he could come to the funeral. Maireed didn’t have his number, but she did have the number of the pub he frequents. In true Irish style, she left a message with them and sure enough Danny called her last night, haha.

I started drinking at 11AM with everyone after the funeral today. After our reception my family and my uncle and his high school buddies went back to Nanny’s and we cleared out her liquor cabinet. She didn’t drink anything but wine, but kept liquor for company. We decided to do a shot of Jameson’s Irish Whisky for Nanny and it tasted funny. My mom told us when she was 14 she stole liquor and filled the rest up with water. Meaning our Jameson was from 36 years ago and was watered down, haha. Therefore we taste tested the rest of the bottles. I had to embrace my Irish roots….

My grandfather, Nanny’s husband, died when my mom was 4 years old. They are now buried next to each other and together now after 40 something years. I just hope I can someday be as sassy as Nanny was.