June Beverly

in memorium

My Grandma died over a month ago but I haven’t allowed myself to process it yet. Since we’re nearing the end of the year, I figure it’s about time to work through those emotions.

When I think of Junie, I think first of her house in Beverly. I think of how excited I was by the idea that her first name and birthday shared a month, and that her middle name and town shared a word as well. I think of how charmed she was by my excitement. And I think of how my imagination grew when I visited her.

Her house was a special place of fairy gardens and waffle cookies and the folklore of my father’s upbringing. He was one of six children, a rambunctious middle child at that, and every puzzle piece I was told about his childhood was carried with me through her front door. I’d wander the upstairs curious which bedroom my father shared with his younger siblings, trying to figure out if the mythical “family fight night” he’d orchestrate while June was out was logistically possible.

A lot of my favorite things about my Grandma are things she fostered in my Dad. I think of her when I think of Annie- the first musical I remember seeing and it was to celebrate her birthday. I think of the dvds of Old Hollywood musicals my father would bring her on his visits after she was moved out of the magic house, a piece of comforting nostalgia once the dementia had started to dig in. I look at Singin’ in the Rain in my Letterboxd top four and draw a direct line from her taste in media to me being introduced to it in elementary school. When I hear of friends’ fathers who won’t engage in musicals, I think of my own, and how he was raised to love them, and how because of Junie, I love them, too.

As a child, my Dad would wake me up early one Sunday per month and drive us the hour and a half to Grandma’s house to accompany her to church. We’d stay til the late afternoon, him and Grandma and whichever of his siblings happened to stop by — and perhaps my mother when she wasn’t sick — keeping mostly to the kitchen and discussing Adult Things that I could never tune into, try as I might to be “grown up,” while I’d go outside and walk through her garden. It curved all the way around her house, complete with birdbaths and feeders and a plethora of lovely scents. I’d meander up and down the path for far longer than my typical walking pace would require, lost in my own little world, and when I came back in Grandma would treat me to her waffle cookies, which I only learned as a teenager had a real name: pizzelles. Her house was the only place I’d get them from, and I have yet to find a pizzelle that rivals hers.

The first time Junie moved — into an apartment, not yet a nursing home — we stopped visiting as frequently. Or at least, I did. And by the time she was moved into the nursing home, I was going off to college, and I think I saw her maybe three times after leaving home. I was failing as a granddaughter, but she never failed at being a perfect grandmother to me, protecting me from bad dreams even after I became too old to have them.

Part of the mythos of Grandma June was her rowdy personality. She was a firecracker- tough, brave, strong. She wasn’t afraid of anything, and she was always ready to defend her loved ones. As a child, to calm me from night terrors, I was told that Junie would show up swinging if anything tried to hurt me, that I could sleep soundly knowing she was never too far to fight for me. Her ability to arrive at my bedroom door in a minute despite being 70 miles away was a blanket truth to four-year-old me, and even after I became old enough to know better, the thought of having her on my side always brought me peace. Moving 5,000 miles away didn’t stop twenty-year-old me from feeling comforted knowing she’d always be in my corner. Even now as she’s passed, I’m still soothed at the thought of her watching over me.

Grandma Junie was funny, and kind, and never crass despite her fighting spirit. It’s hard to pin my memories down into smaller, digestible anecdotes when I conjure her in my head, because she was such an influence on my youngest years. Knowing her was a blessing, and I can only hope to one day live as openly, lovingly, and bravely as she did. More than anything, when I think of my Grandma, I remember sitting next to her in the pew on Sunday mornings, her voice an octave above everyone else’s, me looking up at her, taking in her short white hair and her Sunday best, believing with everything in me that she must’ve been an opera singer in the past. I will never forget her voice, and how she inspires me to use mine more confidently.