The Meme

Today’s prompt is from thnidu: oops! Something’s missing!

Content warning: grief, mourning, and loss.

This year, in addition to the little tin of cookies my aunt gives me every year, she gave me something I’d asked for a while ago – three recipe cards written in my grandmother’s handwriting – and something I hadn’t – the recipe for my grandma’s Leb Kuchen cookies.

I cried.

I’m going to frame the recipes and hang them in my kitchen – I saw the idea on Pinterest, I think, but they’d been flea market finds. These are Grandma’s, and there will never be anything like them again.

My maternal grandmother passed away when I was in my early twenties; I don’t remember her last days very well, although I remember my now-husband, early in our relationship, being the lifesaver, standing behind me at that awful funeral. But I remember Grandma.

My dad worked days and my mom evenings, but the gap times, and when they were building the log cabin that was our home from 1981 on, I spent with my Grandma Dorie. She lived just around the corner – my parents’ house and my aunt and uncle’s house are built on parcels of land cut off from the family farm – within an easy walk, even for a small child.

My memories of Grandma are scattered – playing Uno, making cookies, watching Wheel of Fortune – but they are warm. And at Christmas time…

At Christmastime, something is missing, every year. I eat cookies made from her recipe and remember sitting in her lap.

“Got anything sweet, Grandma?”

“Just me.”

*sniffle* She’s what’s missing, every year.

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