Forty-Two years ago on March 5, 1984, my mother’s mom, Ella Pauline Mosser-Ryder passed away. Just a couple months shy of my graduation from high school, the one person in my life that I knew never judged me, always loved me unconditionally passed away. She was one week shy of her 77th birthday. Her death was more significant of a loss than losing my Grandpa Powell when I was 13. While I miss Grandpa, the lack of my Grandma Ryder in my life made me realize a few things and those things were painful. I have never been the same.
Grandma always went by her middle name, Pauline, rather than Ella. I never knew why she went by her middle name. As an adult, I often wonder why. I share her middle name as my middle name but as a child, I was always called by both my first and middle name, Mary Pauline by my mom’s family members, especially by those in Grandma’s generation. It was said affectionately and it never bothered me but my older first cousins referred to me as Mary P.P. and I hated being called that name.
Grandma Pauline shared a passion for science, particularly space travel. Grandma was a postmistress of our home town post office and she got to go to a Postmaster convention in Florida and she got to go to Cape Canaveral for a tour and brought me back a book on the history of rocketry and space travel that was sponsored by Gulf oil. She actually got my brother a book as well. I was the only one who read the book and I wore the cover off both books. Every time something new came out about space or space travel, Grandma and I would talk about it together. Every August when my parents went to Church Conference, us kids would stay with Grandma and she would set me up to watch the meteor showers in her back yard.
When we did those yearly visits (coming back to Illinois from Kansas), our friends (the kids I knew before we moved away) would join us at her house and we would bowl on the sidewalk in front of her house with 12 pop cans and a softball. I am not sure who enjoyed it more, Grandma or my friends and I. Then she would call us all up, give us a can of Hawaiian Punch and a Reese’s Peanut butter cup so we could rest and cool off. Ah the simple joys of childhood!
Grandma lived in 2 different houses that I could remember. One was directly across the street from us and then the big house uptown, less than 300 yards from where she worked at the post office. There were times after school, Mom would tell me to walk to the post office after school and I would stay with Grandma until Mom came to get me. I got to run the hand canceller to help Grandma with the mail and she paid me with a hot chocolate in a throwaway plastic cup that sat in a frame with a handle. Yeah, that Solo cup with a holder.
Grandma was an avid reader and she got me hooked on Emily Dickenson and I have a velvet covered book of Dickenson’s work that Grandma owned. “Because I would not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.”: was the one line from The Chariot that always stuck with me.
Grandma was a beautiful Christian woman who I only once ever heard her say a bad word and that was the word , “damn” when she hit her toe on the side of a doorway in her house and broke her toe. I remember my dad chuckling and taking her arm and helping her to a chair.
The smells from her house I still remember. Grandma’s coffee would slap you awake at the front door, it was that strong and it would certainly take the tarnish off any silverware. She made it on a gas stove in an old aluminum percolator, always putting a bit of salt in with the coffee to take the bitter bite away. But it was her fried porkchops that were amazing. The smell I remember but have never been able to duplicate. I never knew how she got them to smell that way. She covered them in flour but the smell, it was a heavenly smell and so was the taste. I never got to ask her how she cooked them. Was it an iron skillet? Or was it the cooking grease from the can she saved grease in? I will never know.
The day she died, I was taking a shower when my baby brother (he would have been 11 years old at the time) burst in the bathroom and yelled, “Grandma Ryder died!” I was in shock. As soon as I got out of the shower and dressed, I immediately started packing for the 13-hour trip back to Illinois. My heart was broken, she had promised to come to my graduation and bring Uncle Red. I knew that promise would never come true now. Promise broken, innocence gone.
The next shock came when we arrived at her home and the family was fighting over who got what and why people were taking things out of the house before she was even in the ground. The family I once thought was a happy, working together, loving and peaceful fell completely apart. I realized she was the glue that held the family together. Grandma was gone and no one was able to get their emotions under control. Just three months into my 18th year and what I thought was the way a family was supposed to act and be was not anything close. My relationship with my Aunt and two Uncles was never the same. The relationship with my cousins had never been much as the three older were at least 6-years older and the three younger were at least 3 years younger, we were in different age groups and shared nothing in common. I started my young adult life with no Grandma Pauline as a mentor and my Grandma Powell, well, she wasn’t the type I could share things with.
My life has never been the same since Grandma died. That relationship was one that I have and always will cherish and the only regret I have is not finding out how she cooked those darn pork chops so I could make them, smell them and smile and perhaps imagine she is in the kitchen with me, eating them and the fried potatoes and gravy she always made. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Grandma.
Educated Cowpuncher 