Echoes.

I woke up one night about a week ago in a sweat.
While that itself isn’t unusual, as I tend to have more sleeping problems than most, the fact that I woke up because of a cup was a little strange.

We lost my grandmother a little over a month ago. 90 years old, full of spit, the family matriarch who ruled our lives without ever suggesting such a preposterous notion. She just did it. We knew it, she knew it.
And, boy, do I miss that.

She lived next door, which means that every night I drive home, the empty driveway from next door just mocks a sting that hasn’t even begun to lessen.
The dividing of possessions has started and I could care less about them for the most part. What is junk to the rest are the real treasures to me, but then again, Gran and I were always like that.

There are the old glass shave gel bottles that Avon put out in limited edition shapes – a riverboat, a train. Gran kept the ones she received and considered them part of her treasures. Until she died, they remained in her china cabinet along with random other delicates.
I’m not really sure her kids really know how much those things meant to her, but I did, and things like that are the very reason this loss hurts so badly.

But I woke up the other night convinced that I needed to get up RIGHT THEN and go get the last cup.
You see, Granny had this set of bowl/cups – an object that is the mixture of the two – about the size of a large cappuccino mug, and the grandkids would all fight to be the ones using these special dishes.
She’s make cornbread and milk for us and we’d sit around chowing down as she finished cooking supper in the kitchen.

There is only one of these cups left, and after weeks of being prompted to mention what I want out of the lot, that rose to the top of the previous nonexistent list. I’d love to have those shave gel bottles, the old pictures and articles she kept that the kids cared nothing about, the military flag from my grandfather’s funeral and various odds and ends, but what I wanted more than anything in the world, was the ugly little cup with the men on it.

The cornbread and milk cup.