So it goes.

It’s not that I “eat my feelings.” It’s just that my emotions are starving and if you feed them, they only grow stronger until they win out. That’s why it’s best feed a frivolity, and to starve a sorrow.  

When my brain is in the grieving process, it literally jumps to the conclusion that if you stuff food into it, then the emotional rhetoric will just get smothered into silence. The selective hearing kicks in. At the drive thru, the unsuspecting disembodied voices asks if that’s all, if I’d like anything else. My inner monologue begs, “What was that you said? Make all my items the largest size possible? Add in some buckets of ranch to drown my sorrows in? Of course I’d like a shake, I didn’t even know you had shakes; I’ll take them all…” That empty pit in my stomach, the ache, it can just be filled with food. 

The face stuffing is just one phase in mourning the loss of my beloved, spunky Grandma, who passed away this weekend (despite my insistence that she was too stubborn and would outlive us all). Another phase is the reflection of all the wonderful years I had with her.  A huge part of that is blubbery, but most of it just makes my heart smile. I figured I’d save the blubbery bits for while I’m spooning a bushel of mashed potatoes into my mouth (them Shannons, they’re potato eaters!) and just share a few of the others.

There are far too many to list, but here are a few things my grandma taught me over the years…

• You’re never too old to be a trend setter. Many of my friends still know her as my “VC Grandma” from the years spent drinking Vodka Collins. Why? Because we were too young to know what to order at a bar, and if you want to sound like you’re an old pro, order what an old pro would. Too many toasts to count, and many more to be had in her honor. She inspired a generation of classy cocktailers.
• Lilac bushes really do make the very best forts.
• Wrinkles are just smile lines. You earn those lines from years of joy and laughter. Whether it was chuckles during the later years, when I told her that she needed to work hard at PT because “bikini season” was coming. Or laughing about how she’d be sure to get the front man’s attention at a concert if she threw her bra on stage – since it had a weighted fake boob in it that would probably knock him out (breast cancer survivor). 
• Moles are just “kissy freckles.”
• If you go to church on Sunday, you get Hardee's for breakfast afterwards. You don’t get Hardee's unless you go talk to God first. 
• The secrets to making a good pumpkin pie and great fudge. Can’t tell you those ones. Kitchen magic stays in the kitchen.
• Don’t smoke or wear high heels, but always have your lipstick on and your hair done before leaving the house. My grandma smoked for almost 70 years of her life while strutting about in the most fashionable (albeit tiny) high heels and her health paid the price as she got older; but the lipstick kept it all together somehow. As for the hair, even when she didn’t have much she still went to the beauty shop once a week, at dawn, to keep looking classy.
• Always sleep with a silk pillow case, to keep your curls intact. And if you have a bad dream, just flip the pillow over and start fresh. 
• The best snack in the world is a buttered saltine cracker. Or a cheese single, folded down into four little squares so it’s like four snacks instead of one. (Seriously, it’s a wonder I wasn't obese as a child.)
• Some of the best memories can involve TV, and that’s okay. Whether it’s learning everything there is to know about the prices of consumer goods, from watching Bob Barker on the Price is Right. Or figuring out how to tell who’s lying, who’s cheating and who’s really the evil twin, from hours of soap operas. Or learning how to polka to Lawrence Welk. Or secretly wishing you could grow up to be Ginger Rogers – seriously, my grandma really only put fuel to the fire during my teenage years with my Fred Astaire obsession. Thank goodness she taught me how to do those pin curls…  
• If you drop a spoon, it means that a baby is coming. (I’ve literally thrown myself over to catch a spoon before. I’m not risking that shit.) 
• Always be friendly to bus drivers. That way if one of the sailors is following you home, they’ll help you out. 
• How to not park a car like an idiot. We spent hours driving up and down the river walk, parking in every spot, just so I could get it down. Still didn’t master parallel parking, but at least I’m in the lines the rest of the time!
• If you’re going to collect something, display it. She had hundreds of Avon bottles, all beautiful and unique. We all had our favorites from the years we spent staring up at them on the shelves. 
• You can always tell a good man by his eyes. He has to have kind eyes. A fella can’t fake kind eyes. That’s literally the only requirement for finding your future husband. 

She also made me realize what mortality was, even if it was on accident. During my middle school years, I use to call her every single night before I went to bed just so I could talk to her, tell her about my day, see how she was, etc. Every single night.

One night she didn’t answer right away. The phone just kept ringing and ringing. Finally she picked up. She said she’d been in the other room or something, I told her no big deal; I just had thought she might not answer. And she told me that was silly; she would always answer when I called.  But I knew that was a lie. She was getting older and one day the phone would ring and she wouldn’t be able to answer. So I stopped calling every night, because as a teen, that thought really upset me...  I regret that. 

Luckily I had many years with her beyond that, for advice and laughs. And even though she’s gone in this moment, she was a real gem in so many other moments. Timeless. So it goes.