Goodbye Norma Jean

My grandmother, Norma Jean Anderson. 1924-2008



Over the week end my grandmother passed away. This has been met with some incredulity from my peers and friends that at the age of 41 I still have grandparents. I've been lucky, I guess. I can't claim good genes since none of my living grandparents are blood relatives...my family tree is about as splintered as it gets. My grandmother, Norma Jean was actually my father's stepmother...but she was his stepmother before I was born so she's always been my grandmother to me. My remaining grandfather, "General Gramps" in Tucson Arizona is alive and kicking though he was never married to Norma Jean; but his wife was married to her husband. Please, don't even try to figure that out. My ex husband still doesn't get it so why should you?

My grandmother was 84.She had a great life and she will be sorely missed. She was Armenian, so we looked nothing alike. She had a big noisy family. They all just referred to me as "Danny's girl". When she and her sisters were a family gathering they were famous for what my father called "The Armenian Sliver". They would sit with a Kringle in front of them and insist that they didn't want much, they were on a diet, "just a sliver". And within an hour that Kringle would be slivered to nothingness. It was Armenian slivered to death.

She loved jokes, but could never remember the punchline, which made them all the more funny. She was a brunette, but went blond for years, which never rang true for me. She was 5 feet on a good day and worried incessantly about her weight and told my father when he had cancer that he had never looked so good because he had lost so much weight. I was infuriated and told her so and it was the only time I saw her temper flare. Never cross a woman who is losing a child even if you are trying to instructed them on what is PC these days.

Her laugh will never leave me...it was like those canned laughs on sitcoms with a bit of Tinkerbell mixed in, and she laughed often and with gusto. She always called me "Kimmy" and I never minded.

About 6 months ago out of the blue I couldn't shake wanting to go back to my maiden name. It made no sense to me. I've been divorced (very amicably) for nearly 4 years and kept the surname Bednarski because of my kids and the business. But suddenly I found myself researching how to do a legal name change. I asked the kids, they didn't care. It was a giant pain in the ass to be honest...forms filled out in triplicate, paying for a legal publication, three trips to the courthouse, social security, the bank, the mortgage, credit card companies, and about $500 in fees to change everything and a court hearing to change my name legally to Kimberley Bednarski Anderson. Business wise, it changes nothing. But yet, why did I bother? I'm thinking that somehow subliminally I was reaching out to my heritage. The passing of my grandmother and that it could have been the last of the Anderson's in my family does not escape me.

I will miss you Norma Jean :)