I remember the sleepovers; swimming at three, maybe four. Afloat on her great bosom, she carried me gently around the pool to a slow swinging rhythm, effortlessly rocking to her song. Next morning it's cereal with thinly sliced banana (don't ask why I remember this), a glittering playground ball, and a plastic palm tree that came apart in sections.

Our hands were always too dirty to play her piano and every conversation invariably at some point involved the word "gluten." "Okay, so maybe I'll cheat just a little this time" and then she'd laugh. I can hear it now: a warm watery giggle with a great many "oh's" in it and maybe a "my goodness" or two tossed in. I've been told she was very sad for a long time but I was never shown that side. I only know the chuckling Mabel with the trill in her breath.

Sometimes it is better to leave ones memories behind. During one nursing home visit we caught her on the ground floor. She was strolling around on her own. She had forgotten her walker. She had forgotten that she couldn't walk. She had also, it seemed, forgotten about hearing trouble. She had even forgotten how old she was. When grandma asked ma for the answer, ma, always thinking, asked back,

"How old do you think you are?"
"Oh, I don't know. Fifty-something," she replied.
"You're eighty-nine."
"Eighty-nine? Wheee!"

Then she said she had a thing for one of the nursing home orderlies:

"If I wasn't married I'd go for him!" she said.

How lucky she was -- in her last days -- to have the weight of her age lifted from her for awhile. And yet her character stood firm. She remained, in the face of it all, steadfastly funny, still correcting grammar and singing scales.

Grandma left us sooner than we expected, a strange thing to say at ninety-one.