@kmosher

That was the look he always gave her. <3

When I was a kid, we’d visit my mom’s parents – Nana and Grampy – frequently. We typically did dinner with them once a week, and of course, we always attended church on Sunday mornings together. Their house acted as the back-up after school destination when no one was at our house. Whenever my parents weren’t available to play chauffeur, my Grampy would be there with his 1990-something blue pontiac grand prix. I remember that the passenger seat was always pulled all the way up to the front – not for someone’s long legs in the backseat, but so my Nana could touch the dashboard at all times! I guess that was her version of the “holy shit” bar.

Grampy would “chauffeur” me to and from my weekly piano lessons. The lessons were a gift from Nana and Grampy, because as Nana always said, I have “piano fingers”. I love remembering that Grampy could sit for ages in the car and be content to wait for me while listening to CBC Radio. I hated it as a kid – “It’s just talking!”, I would say incredulously later to my mom – but I love and appreciate my Grampy’s love for it now.

Nana would slip me $5 bills when Grampy wasn’t looking. She was a spoiler by nature and I came to secretly believe the bills were a reward for succeeding at our memory game that she and I would play. She had amazing collections of thimbles, miniature decorative shoes and Lilliput Lane houses on display around their house. And she’d change things slightly when you least expected it – swapping out two shoes or rearranging the houses – and then on my next visit, I would eagerly search for changes. She loved it when I noticed the changes.

Nana and Grampy had a traditional marriage. They met in 1949 and married in 1953. She was from a PEI farm family of ten, he was a worker’s son from Bridgewater, NS. They had two children, a boy and a girl (my mom!). Grampy was a minister, Nana a homemaker. Because of Grampy’s profession, they moved frequently. My memories of them begin when Grampy retired and they moved to New Glasgow to be closer to their daughter, my mom, and our family when I was very young. All of the memories I have of my Nana are from the house they owned just streets away from my parents place.

My Nana died suddenly of cancer in 2002. She was only 72 years old.

In the ten years since her death I have become incredibly aware of how young she was when she died.

New Years Eve, 1978

My most favourite memory of her isn’t the game we played or the $5 bills. It isn’t her cooking and baking, although both were the best kind. What I remember most, and my heart still melts to think of it, is the way my Grampy looked at her with all the love in the world. He called her “Budd” when he thought people weren’t listening. For many years I didn’t understand the chosen term of endearment. Later, I learned my grandmother’s full name was Margaret Gladys Budd Hebb. “Budd” was his special name for her and he alone used it. He used it with laughter, with ire and with much love. When I remember them together, I remember hearing Grampy call her “Budd” on so many occasions.

My grandparents were married for 48 years. That’s a tremendous achievement. If it wasn’t for her death, they’d have made it to 59 years this year.

There are so many things that I’ve learned from both of these people, including: a particularly strong spelling lesson on the word “different”, Grampy teaching me to make tea at the ripe age of 7 years old, and how to consistently stay 20 km below the speed limit while they accompanied my mom and I to dance competitions around the province. But the best lessons are the lessons of love, including the quiet moments when I could plainly see their love for each other – especially when he called her “Budd”.

Love doesn’t seem to last a lifetime anymore, and I like to joke that the situation for single 20-somethings is pretty bleak. I cannot fathom what it’s like to be with one person for the length of time my grandparents were together, but I greatly admire the love and respect they had for each other. Times have changed, norms are different. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you wont, but you can’t deny that we’ll all fall in love at some point in our lives.

It’s the small things that make you realize how much one person loves and appreciates another person, and it’s the little tells, just like “Budd”, that I look for in the relationships I see between friends, family and loved ones.

I’m so happy I was able to experience a part of their love.