Grandma Phyllis

Today we honor and remember my Grandmother Phyllis Truman Hunt Bracken, a complex individual I wish I had been able to spend more time with.

As a budding adolescent I felt some comfort knowing that my height and my curvy figure came from my Grandma Phyllis. She would be, frankly, more than slightly disappointed in my skills as a housekeeper. The state of my kitchen floor and my bed would appall her. Her cleaning gene just didn't make it down the chain.

Friendship meant a lot to my grandmother. She loathed the ranch she grew up on, near Gunlock, Utah. It was simply too isolated. I think she must have been lonely growing up. When she was able to live life her way she did it with a close circle of friends and neighbors. I remember riding in the backseat once while she gossiped with her neighbor and best friend, Grace. "Now don't you repeat this," she said to Grace as she shared a juicy piece of information. Even as a kid I thought this was hilarious.

Secretly I loved that my grandmother swore and said things like "shut up" when she was annoyed with someone. The fact that she never told me to shut up made it even more enjoyable. She seemed so salty and world-wise. She was very rarely sentimental. She survived two husbands. Her first husband was brutally murdered and left her a widow with three small children. I never heard her cry or talk about it. She was practical and sometimes embarrassingly honest.  True to her generation, she didn't care for fat people, was suspicious of "Injuns", and was an unabashed sexist. Somehow, with her, it was funny instead of infuriating. Mainstream spirituality wasn't what I would call her greatest strength. She was simply too contrary to fit into the perfect Mormon mold, if such a thing exists. She may have passed this gene on to me, though she never knew it.

Her favorite word was "shit". She used this word in every imaginable way. To babies: "Well aren't you the cutest little shit".  To adults (my dad): "You look like shit".  The fact that it annoyed my mother made it even more funny and idiosyncratic.

 

She loved babies. She loved her family. She made the best potato salad anyone's ever tasted. She liked going for drives too. I never remember her getting angry with me, even that one time I picked every single flower in her yard.  I wish she could have lived long enough to hold my daughter. I know had she been able to, Phyllis would have declared her the cutest little shit yet.

I wasn't able to make it to her funeral, and I'll always be sad about that. 

 

Tonight our food offering for Phyllis consists of bacon, which my grandmother ate every single morning. She had excellent taste, yes? Also some tea, which she drank every day. No doubt she would have been disappointed with my choice, Lemon Zinger, instead of her very scandalous (in Mormon circles, at least), Black.