After a Death in the Family, Paul Reflects

My grandmother passed away on Wednesday night at the age of 95.

She was married to Paul Stanley Wozniak, father of Paul Albert Wozniak, father of me. I'm Paul Robert. Our middle names are a necessity at family holidays  because if someone hollers "Paul!" numerous people could answer.

Grandpa died in 1992, leaving grandma a widow for the rest of her long life. 22 years after he left us, she joined him.

I cried a lot about it today, even though I haven't seen her in 5 years. She lived in Atlanta. Florida before that, and I didn't see her much after she moved to the south and I moved through high school.

But when I was much younger, just a boy, my grandmother represented adventure. I was in, from, and all about my little suburb, Plum Borough, PA. My family took a few vacations per year, and other than that, my whole life was under my parents supervision, in Plum, another beautiful version of Pleasantville, USA.

Fond memories of mine are of the times I would go spend with my grandmother in Scalp Level. Scalp is a neighborhood of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, just over a few hills from Mine 40, where my dad grew up. It's not a place I'd go for a vacation nowadays, and when my grandfather was in the coal mines, it probably wasn't much nicer.

But, I loved going to see my grandmother. Scalp Level felt about as different from my world as it could be. There was a sidewalk, and actual traffic that drove by. There was a store like 4 doors down, and my cousins lived 2 doors down. As a kid I used to be charged up just knowing I was going to go there. I'd never been in a store without my mom, and my cousins could go whenever they wanted. It blew my mind.

It was gritty. It was a little town. I lived in a housing development that was surrounded by woods, other housing developments, and a few farms. You could barely find trouble even if you searched for it where I grew up, but my grandmother's neighborhood had the possibility of danger. And I loved it.

I loved it because she trusted me. She gave me a little space. Knowing that my cousins would show me some things and probably hoping that I would make good decisions, she gave me a long leash as a little boy, and I"ll never forget that feeling.

Also, she captivated me with tales of the old days. They had livestock when she was growing up. 4H isn't big where I'm from, so I could barely get my head around that. I was blown away by stories of boiled bathwater, iceboxes, and neighborhoods where most people spoke Polish.

As she leaves us, I have been reflecting on my life a little bit more than hers. I remember her being such an important part of m life as a little boy. But as I grew older, that importance became less and less. I talked to my wife about it, and she had a very similar experience with her grandmother. They spent tons of time together when she was little. As she grew to be an adult, that time lessened to just about nothing.

I don't feel bad because she died. She lived to 95. Death at that point is not a tragedy. It's part of the journey, and according to the people who saw her last, it was time. I don't feel too terribly bad about not seeing her that much. She moved to the south, I moved to the west.

What I do realize I could have done better are the little things. A card once per year to just say "Hey, thanks for giving birth to the guy who fathered me" might have been nice.

Her passing has made me look at my actions, and I'm not 100% satisfied with what I see. So, like everything in this life, I either win, or learn.

I think I'll chalk this one up to both.