My grandmother is dead. She was in poor health for a few months, and died at the age of 88. Many people say that is an old age to die. It doesn’t help my pain any when people try to console me like that way. Still, it doesn’t make sense to make my life a standstill just due to the passing of my grandmother, but I still will feel bad if I had nothing in this issue about her. Viola Marie Cochran was born in 1915. I first met her in 1983, but don’t really remember much about the first few meetings, seeing how I was just born and all. She was kind enough to put my parents up in her house for a few months after they have moved back to Ohio from Pennsylvania, and even saved my life at an early age. Apparently I was climbing up a cabinet that was beginning to tip over as she jumped over a baby-gate and stopped the pancakization of little James.

My grandfather died in 1984, which made it impossible to ever get to know him or establish anything in the way of recallable memory about him. Still, I heard a decent amount about his accomplishments, and was always assured that “we would have been excellent friends”. So, all the memories I have about my mothers’ parents are just of my grandmother, and of that little house at 1007 Garfield Avenue in Lancaster, Ohio. Typically I don’t like being too specific with information, especially about locations of houses, but the house has a part of me in it and vice versa – I just can’t excise it from my being.

Before we lived in the house on South Maple, we lived about 16 blocks down from my grandmothers on Washington Avenue. When times were really tough (in the late eighties), before my father got the job at McCombe’s Auto Body), my dad was the only one in the family who had a car. (An Editor’s note to the readers : Keep in mind that your honorable editor is only twenty. When these events were taking place, ey was only about 6-9 years old and may have some facts incorrect). As such, and even when we had two family cars and it was nice outside, we walked down to grandmother’s house and visited with her. Every birthday, every holiday, we would make the trip down to her house, and being the greedy fucks kids are, we waited for the cash that was going to cross our palms as a present.

Obviously, I grew up, and I entered DePauw University in the Fall of 2001. Needless to say, the amount of times a year I could visit with my grandmother was cut down dramatically as I was Indiana sans car more than half the year. Still, I tried to make it down to the house on Garfield Avenue at least once every break I had, with the added incentive of my mother telling me “this may be the last time you see her.” Sometimes reluctant, I would throw on my shoes and we would spend about a half an hour each time just chatting, oblivious to the fact that one of those times would honestly be the last I would see her alive.

Going in and out of the hospital a number of times throughout this last summer (Summer 2003), my grandmother was still in decent spirits, and seemed that everything would be okay. Falling and fracturing her hip, she was resigned to a hospital where a myriad of things would go wrong. Minor seizure-like inflictions sapped both her and my mothers strength, who would spend many a night just sitting by her side. While my mother was just a mess of emotion (still is, even two months after the passing), the amount of cohesion she has shown is downright admirable. I don’t have that ability. I just run away from my problems until they just either resolve themselves or fuck me up beyond belief. You will see that most notably in my teeth. All fucked up because I was too chickenshit to yank out the loose ones when I was a kid. This strength is something that I have to learn from my mother before something requires I step up to the situation, otherwise I just know I’ll let people down.

Such was the case after my grandmother’s health rapidly deteriorated after we (as a family) made a trip to drop me back off at my room. Everything went to hell in the two days that my family was in Indiana. Grandmother had more and more things wrong with her, and my mother called to tell me that this may just be the last few days of my grandmothers life. Unsure how to handle the situation, I let my most primitive and irrational beliefs surface during my discussion with mother, saying that Lancaster was trying to entangle me into a banal existence like so many others. I was lucky enough to have an ally in my father, a real surprise in this matter since I was almost definite that he was going to not be as understanding as he did. He told me that he didn’t know how to really operate under these situations, and was able to calm down my mother sufficiently. To show you exactly how bad I fucked up, my own sister – flesh and blood and even the creator of covers for NF #3 and 10 – told me to fuck off. It still hurts when I think about it, but I can totally understand the emotions behind it. I was an asshole.

Viola Marie Bash (formerly Cochran) died Thursday, August 28th, 2003 . I came back to Lancaster to attend her funeral and act as a pallbearer. The bus ride to and from Greencastle was beyond depressing, just sitting there and trying to cope with what I happened. I looked at the body at the funeral. I couldn’t bear to see her for more than a second. She was a flapper. She was married for over fifty years. I sincerely hope that I made her proud. I love her.