This was a favorite Greek saying of my late grandmother, Marjorie Grace (Gaitanis) Kearney. She died August 11. It was only twenty days after my dad’s mother, Emily Kathryn (Bassett) Agnew, passed away. It’s hard now not to hold up their lives, as well as the manner of their deaths, one next to the other in comparison. For the sake of clarity, I’ll (mostly) refer to them by their first names.
Marge was born September 18, 1925 and spent her whole life in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the third in a family of five girls, the daughters of Alexander and Mildred Gaitanis. Her father came to America from the Peloponnese peninsula when he was 15. He and his brother had to stow away on a ship to come to America. She met Russell J. Kearney (aka Pops) at church and married him in February of 1948 in a Catholic Church in downtown Cleveland. Below is their wedding photo.
Marge was born September 18, 1925 and spent her whole life in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the third in a family of five girls, the daughters of Alexander and Mildred Gaitanis. Her father came to America from the Peloponnese peninsula when he was 15. He and his brother had to stow away on a ship to come to America. She met Russell J. Kearney (aka Pops) at church and married him in February of 1948 in a Catholic Church in downtown Cleveland. Below is their wedding photo.
Marge was a successful realtor and she and Russell have three kids: Kathi, Carol (my mom) and Joe. Pops still lives in the house my mom grew up in, in Avon, Ohio.
Emily was born September 25, 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Mark and Edna Bassett. Her mother died in a car accident when Emily was a baby. She was in the car too; I think her mother may have even been holding her. Emily’s family moved to Chicago and eventually settled in Springfield, Ohio. Her father remarried while Emily was young. She met my granddad, Paul, while they were both attending the Dayton Art Institute. They married and both worked as artists.
Emily was born September 25, 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Mark and Edna Bassett. Her mother died in a car accident when Emily was a baby. She was in the car too; I think her mother may have even been holding her. Emily’s family moved to Chicago and eventually settled in Springfield, Ohio. Her father remarried while Emily was young. She met my granddad, Paul, while they were both attending the Dayton Art Institute. They married and both worked as artists.
Emily and Paul have five children: Peggy, Patrick (my dad), Jennifer, John, and Molly. They lived on Grafton Ave in Dayton, in a house that my dad has always said was haunted. Paul died in 1991 from lung cancer. A few years later Emily moved out to Arizona, where she lived by herself and frequently painted the beautiful scenery surrounding her. In the mid 2000s she fell and broke her rotator cuff. She was no longer able to paint. She moved in with my Aunt Jenny after the fall and the surgery, but she spent most of the days alone in the house, unable to paint or drive a car. Quickly, her mind began to betray her and she struggled to remember names, faces, details, and even basic social norms. She was diagnosed first with dementia and later with Alzheimer’s. Emily was moved back to Dayton and into assisted living in 2009.
Because my grandma Emily moved to Arizona when I was still in elementary school, I didn’t get to know her as well as my grams Marge. Every summer growing up, we’d drive from Atlanta up to Cleveland and spend a week at my grandparents’ house in Avon. We’d be greeted by grams with a plate of her sugar cookies. My sister used to weigh herself at the beginning and end of the trip, calculating how much she gained from eating grams’ cooking (well, mostly baking).
In the two years between Emily’s move back to Dayton and her death, my interactions with my grandma were difficult, saddening, and often frustrating. She had no idea who I was by that point. I’d repeatedly explain that I was Patrick’s daughter, but she thought Patrick was her husband, not her first son. Emily’s body eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s as her brain no longer told her body to fight off infection. When Emily finally passed this July, I was more sad for my dad than myself. For me, my grandma was already gone long before her death. But it wrecked my dad, marking the first time I’d really seen him cry.
With Marge’s passing, it was very different. Of course, it was harder to bear simply because it was only twenty days after Emily’s death. But it was more than that. She died essentially just from old age. Marge had temporal arteritis, which causes the inflammation of blood vessels in the head. Any health issues she had occurred primarily in the last year, and she lost her eyesight because of the temporal arteritis. Her body began to shut down rapidly in late July, as she developed pneumonia and her lungs began to fill with fluid. My sister and I were able to see grams in the hospital just a few days before she passed. As I sat next to her bed, stroking her hair, I could hear her choked-out request to God: Take me up, just take me up. Hearing her plead with God, and watching Pops stroke her cheek and hold her hand broke me.
I thought about Jesus weeping at Lazarus’ death, and I cried, not just because I was sad being in that room, but because it wasn’t supposed to be that way. My grams’ body wasn’t supposed to just shut down, and my pops wasn’t supposed to watch his wife of 63 years die. And so I cried.
I wouldn’t call Marge a “wild woman”, despite that favorite saying of hers. But I would say she lived a full life, marked by trips to Greece and Ireland and fifty-year friendships. At the funeral wake, I listened to my grams’ girlfriends tell stories about how Marge sparkled and brought joy to the people around her. Marge and Russell had been close friends with three other couples since their marriage in 1948. They continued to play bridge together and go dancing well into their seventies and eighties. My pops is the last of the men, and grams was the first of the women to pass. Everyone agreed: Margie had lived a full life, and she was just ready to go.
So why is it hard to bear my grams’ death, despite the fullness of her life? Maybe that’s exactly why--because her life was so full, full of love and joy and an excitement for living. To watch those things unravel, to watch a person so full of life deteriorate, it reminds me that it wasn’t what God intended for us. When Nick preached on the death of Lazarus earlier this year, it was the first time I thought about the idea that Jesus cried not because Lazarus was dead (he knew he was going to raise him), but because death was not the Father’s hope for us. I have to remind myself of the truth constantly, and I still miss my grams, but ultimately I can have peace, knowing she is in the one place God did intend for her.
