Ruth Ellen, born in 1938 in Stoneham, MA to a Seventh Day Adventist pastor and his wife, was a pastor's daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a doctor of Psychology. Of those titles, the only one that fit comfortably was her PhD, the accomplishment she remained proudest of her entire life.
Little Ruth, named for her mother's favorite sister and Ellen White, was clearly not the family favorite; that honor went to her older sister, Elaine, who was a proper young lady. Ruth was too smart, too restless, and too uncomfortable in a dress to fit the model of an ideal pastor's daughter, but she was a whiz on anything that could produce music. As a young woman, Ruth wanted to be a pilot and was accepted into the air force training program, but went into nursing training instead. She worked summers at the air force base (probably hoping, Mom says, to catch the eye of a pilot. Or perhaps she couldn't entirely let go of that dream), and played the piano for her father's church on Saturdays. It was in that church that she met the love of her life, Bill. She would later say that he was the handsomest thing to ever walk through the doors of the church. After the service she went up to her father and told him to invite the tall and good-looking stranger home for dinner, so he did. Over the next several months, Bill spent every Saturday with Ruth and her family, and they were married within the year.
That was the beginning, and a lot of what followed was hard and sad and scary and confusing for all concerned. It was also long before I was born. I remember Grandma playing the piano in the living room of the trailer home she shared with us for a while, her eyes tightly closed and her face turned up to the ceiling. The open hymnal was for us, not her; she knew every note and chord. Mom and I sang "I Come to the Garden Alone," "What A Friend We Have in Jesus," "Rock Of Ages." We sang every hymn we knew while she played, and we learned new ones. I always asked for “I Come to the Garden Alone,” it’s a hauntingly beautiful song. My little sister, Merry, who was very little at the time, once interrupted to ask, in a loud whisper, why Grandma was playing in her sleep.
I remember Mother's Days, Memorial Days, and July Fourths; after we moved into the log house, Mom would send Dad (or, later, me) to pick Grandma up and bring her over for a picnic. We would plunk her down in the yard in a lawn chair because she couldn't make it up our stairs, and while Mom got the meal ready we kids would bring a parade of baby animals for her to admire and squeal over. She might not have liked kids much, but she loved anything small and furry. Baby goats, kittens, chicks, ducklings; whatever had been born or hatched that year met Grandma, and she loved them all. On one of my last visits with Grandma, she told me how she had never been allowed to have pets when she was a kid, and how she always made sure that her kids had animals around. "It's important," she said with conviction. Cats, dogs, love birds, a small army of the fluffiest teddy bear hamsters in the world, and a rabbit named Houdini all featured in the stories Grandma and Mom would tell. She taught my mom that a home wasn't a home without at least one four-footed furry in it, and Mom taught me. Love of animals is a family legacy.
As I grew up, I began to appreciate how complicated a person Grandma was. She had many faces, and you never quite knew who you would be dealing with. I started hearing other stories: how Grandpa left her when she was pregnant with Mom, and how she went kinda crazy after that; how she fled the country with Andy, her youngest child, after his doctor put him into an experimental treatment program that was killing him, and how she evaded the car full of men who were supposed to arrest her; how she lived as a man, Jerry Alan, for years; how difficult family was for her, and how she could never feel safe in one place very long. I also began to notice other things about her, like how strong she was. "Feminist" was not a word we used in my family, but even though I don't remember hearing Grandma say it, she taught me what it meant. She never underestimated what she could accomplish, and if anyone else did, they would regret it. She didn't seem to mind that people didn't always like her, but she demanded that they treat her with respect. She had no problem going head-to-head with authority figures, you could have no better advocate in a hospital than Grandma. She followed her dreams, channeling her grief after Andy died into the realization of her life-long ambition to earn her doctorate. And she knew how to make something glorious out of a mess she had made herself. As Mom said, "She would make mistakes, terrible mistakes sometimes, then turn it around and do something good with it." Sent to prison? Started a degree program for inmates in association with Loma Linda University (called Awaken, Inc.) after being released. At the time there was nothing like that in the US, but they are common now. Changed her gender and regretted it? Wrote a book and did countless interviews so that trans people who came after her would have another viewpoint to consider before making such a big change themselves. Grandma was relentless if she had information she thought was important, especially if she thought “they” didn’t want people to have it.
She would say herself that only the good die young, and she wasn't. Grandma hated getting old, hated losing her independence, hated that her indomitable spirit was no longer enough to carry her off and away. But she loved visits from us. She loved telling stories. She loved hearing about my classes when I was in college, and what I was writing. She would always tell me I should write a book. When I started bringing my husband to visit we stopped having to wonder which version of Grandma we would get, because he invariably brought out The Doctor, which was her best self. It was only in her final months that she found peace, and, at last, a place where she felt she could stay. Her room in the nursing home overlooked the train track, and Grandma knew the train schedule by heart. She watched the trains run in company with the bear the nurses at her previous nursing home gave her after she survived COVID, and talked about the trains she rode to work every day in San Francisco, and the long beach walks she used to take. She would park and walk, she said, barefoot so she could feel the waves as they rolled in. "Three miles out and back, every day," she said, "which is probably why I'm in as good shape as I'm in, considering." Grandma loved to talk about the many places she had lived. Like Albuquerque, where she lived with her oldest daughter, Lori, for several years. She loved the balloon festival there, and the cruise they took that one year...and she would wonder aloud how old Aunt Lori's cat was now. In those last visits she was happy like I'd never seen her, Grandma and her bear and her trains.
And then, she was gone. We had a teddy bear picnic for her 85th birthday, like she used to do for Mom and Aunt Lori and Andy, and we played her favorite songs and read "The Owl and the Pussycat," her favorite poem. Mom said she had thought that poem was a song when she was young, because Grandma always sang it to them. I said goodbye that day, and even though she was unresponsive, she tried to hug us all before we left. Mom was with her the next day when she breathed her last, Aunt Lori with them in spirit and by phone. Her suffering is over, she finally knows perfect love and perfect peace. She is home with the son she adored and the God she held at arm's length, and we are left with the impossible task of grieving a person who could never be fully understood.
"Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose," (from The Wonder Years). We don't have a choice about a lot of things in life, but we do get to choose what we remember about people. I know that I will think of her whenever I see a train go by. I know that I will never hear a hymn played on piano without remembering her concentrating face and the music that poured from her fingers. I know that next time I walk along a beach, she will be walking there beside me; two shores connected by the endless ocean that washes our feet. I know that when I hold a baby anything I squeal just like Mom does, just like Grandma did. I know that when I look in the mirror I see her strength in the line of my brow, the intensity of my eyes, the set of my jaw; and I know that on the bad days, that will straighten my spine just enough. I know that the love she struggled to express still managed to make its way, if only in bits and pieces, to her children and her friends, and on to the rest of us. I know that family is important even if it's hard sometimes, because I've watched Mom and Aunt Lori and Grandma push through a lot of hard to stay connected and together. I know that the dreams that keep us awake at night are worth working towards, even if they take decades to realize, because Grandma held onto hers and that was one thing that could never be taken away from her. And I know that I can be brave, like she was, because no mistake is irredeemable.
Thank you, Grandma. I miss your laugh so much.