Well, the sequined skirt and shiny heels will have to wait.

Saturday began with an early-morning knock on the door.  Naturally, the cable man is only punctual when his call time is dawn (our no-kids dawn, anyway, a time I won’t provide here for fear of retributive actual-dawn phone calls).  Shortly behind him came the furniture deliverymen and the tub-faucet-hole-driller (apparently, this is a job).  In the space of ten minutes, our house went from perfect stillness to total chaos.  And more dust.

I escaped to McDonald’s to pick up breakfast.

Once I was back home devouring my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, I got a phone call from The Sis.  “Bad news,” she said, and followed that greeting with details of The Brother-in-Law’s sudden decimation at the hands of a violent stomach bug.  Our dinner-and-symphony plans hung in the balance as his puking shook the walls of their house. (“It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard,” The Sis, mother of a newborn baby and incessantly barking dog, told me.)

I had already decided it was going to be a lazy day of sporadic unpacking and consistent movie-watching from my new favorite oversized chair.  In between Definitely, Maybe and Sex and the City 2 (don’t hate me because I fall victim to shameless rom-com marketing ploys), as I hovered over a box full of dishes and considered a new form of shabby chic living called Dishes at Foot Level, my phone rang.  And then, news that my ninety-nine year-0ld grandmother had just passed away, even as The Dad was in transit to say his goodbyes.

Well isn’t this day just a bitch from hell, I thought.  Then I returned to the oversized chair and planted myself in tearful defiance until The Husband got home from Home Depot.

My grandmother would have loved the sequined skirt.  Louise Strickland was not your mother’s grandmother.  For reasons about which I’m still unclear, The Mom and Sis and all the other female members of our family called her Mom.  The Dad and his two brothers opted for the more formal Mother.  She raised all three of them on a teacher’s salary after my grandfather died when they were young.  There are so many Mom stories it’s ridiculous–like her legendary shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus, or how many times she sent The Dad and his brothers off to find the perfect switch with which to spank them–but what I remember most about her is her never-waning sense of style.  She would show up for a Christmas visit in her black leather skirt and heels, and while the warmest thing about her was her red cashmere turtleneck sweater, I never doubted her love.  She just didn’t express it with chocolate chip cookies and bedtime stories.  One Christmas, The Mom’s jaw dropped in shock when The Sis and I opened our gifts from Mom and each pulled out wildly-patterned silk panties.

I was ten.  Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate atypical expressions of love.

Even when she moved into the nursing home, she demanded that her hair be styled weekly (and colored its once-natural red).  She was driving well into her eighties and mowing her lawn regularly until she fell and broke her hip.  She survived cancer, world wars, and our family.  She was one hell of a woman.

Though she’s been gone from us, mentally, for quite awhile, her leaving this earth hit me like a ton of bricks.  The swinging kind that keeps returning to land in my gut.

So after all that, The Brother-in-Law did not recover in time for us to keep our plans.  The Husband and I got some takeout from the gourmet grocery store and, at my request and through some tears, a bottle of champagne to celebrate our successful move.

“Are you okay celebrating today?” he asked me as I blew snot into my sleeve.

And I was.  Not because I’ll use any excuse to drink a bottle of champagne (okay, maybe partly because of that), but because there will be other symphony nights, much to TH’s chagrin.  And because, rather than discrete unconnected moments, life is formed by all the things that mean something to us, tied together in a pattern beyond our understanding that somehow ends up being more beautiful than anything we could create ourselves.  Because I will wear that skirt and those heels, and when I do I’ll think of my grandmother and how much she would approve of my outfit.  Then I’ll cry a little.   And then I’ll look at The Niece, who has Mom’s eyes and her red hair, and be thankful for the many ways in which our loved ones never leave.