I love you more. (Tribute delivered at my Grandma Clare’s memorial service today in Williams Bay.)

I struggle to understand how I stand here today, how there could possibly be a reason for us to gather as we’ve gathered. Because still, even after the roses, the bedside vigils, the phone calls to relatives and friends, and the memorial programs you hold in your hands, I feel her here with me as if she’d never gone.

I remember standing in the hallway of our upstairs apartment in the gray house on Jefferson Street, the olive green phone cord wrapped around my legs, the fingers of my free hand running up and down the slats of the folding closet doors. At four years old I made my pitch. “Grandma, you have to stop smoking. I do not want you to die.”

She responded, “I won’t die, Sugar. Grandma’s magic.”

My Grandma Clare was not a conventional grandmother by any means. She did not bake cookies. She did not knit or play solitaire or bridge. She did not wear an apron or her hair in a bun.

She told me stories about tying a rope from the house to the barn when she was little because the cows needed milking, even in snowstorms. She drilled me on spelling words and made sure I knew the names of all the important elected officials in our town. She dressed me in a sandwich board when I was eight years old. “Clare Mitchell for Sheriff”, it read as she waved like royalty from the back of a red convertible.

She taught me how to take pride in my work, whatever the task at hand. Whenever I visited her here at George Williams, she granted me admission to her temple, a place few were allowed to enter — the office supply closet. I would plunk out nonsense on her typewriter, filling page after page of her “From the Desk of Clare Mitchell” stationary with the pink carnation on it. It always felt like I was in the Oval Office when I visited her at work. She commanded that level of respect and decorum.

I remember sleeping over in her trailer on Geneva Street, rolling out my Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag alongside her provincial bedroom furniture, her brush and mirror set displayed on top. Only my Grandma Clare could turn a mobile home into a palace. She let me stay up late those nights. We would eat cookies and cream from cavernous bowls, me on my stomach on her gold shag in front of the television, her behind me in her gold velour armchair. Watching Moonlighting and Cheers with Grandma Clare taught me everything I know about human behavior. I will never forget the sound of her clearing her throat over my shoulder.

My Grandma was a politician, a gardener, and an avid fan of the Green Bay Packers. She taught me my first dirty jokes and reminded me constantly to enunciate properly, look presentable, and do my best. She loved bouquets of baby’s breath and taking the Lord’s name in vain. She could not start the day without smoking a Kool cigarette and drinking a glass of orange juice. When we went out, fresh black coffee and water with no ice prolonged our breakfast routine.

She has always had a following among my friends. In high school, she won fans for tying her butcher knife to her broom handle, hanging out her second story window, and giving the branch that had been keeping her awake at night what it had coming.  My college friends found it hilarious that she left my college graduation ceremony to use the restroom and didn’t return for over an hour, having stopped for a burger and a beer at the sports bar across the street. Even in my adult life, readers of my online blog adore her from around the world.

My Grandma Clare was a monument of fortitude, a fighter, fearless.

In 1986, the idea possessed her to run for Sheriff. This left an indelible mark on me and, I’m convinced, transformed me into a person who does not accept the rules at face value. During a candidate forum, for example, my grandma, the only female candidate, the only candidate without a background in law enforcement, held her own. An article from the Janesville Gazette at that time read: “Before the question period, each candidate gave an introductory speech with Mr. Nelson offering Ms. Mitchell a ‘ladies first’ opportunity to address the crowd. Ms. Mitchell was quick to dispel any notions that she sought special consideration as she displayed a target sheet riddled with bullet holes. [She said] ‘This was my target using a .38 Smith & Wesson 6-inch at 15 yards, and 10 of my 12 shots qualified. Don’t mess with me.’”

My Grandma Clare was also a connoisseur of beauty, a lover of nature, and despite her tough exterior, a lady at her core. I will never be done apologizing to her for not inheriting her make-up gene, her jewelry gene, or her appreciation of antique figurines.

She had panache, from her bright red Jackie-O sunglasses to her collection of leather-trimmed driving gloves.

And did she know how to work a room. Her innate people savvy, her grace, her ability to make almost anyone feel special. She told me in one of her last lucid moments that she worried she would not be here to make a positive influence on others.

And again, I’m taken back.

“I won’t die,” she said so simply it became a promise. “Grandma’s magic.”

Her final weeks play over and over and over in my mind.

I spent all but two days at her side in her final three weeks.

In three weeks time, this icon of independence became like a child again, requiring care and tenderness, delighting in life’s simplest treasures, like her great-granddaughter, my daughter, squeezing her toes in her hospital bed, or the last few cool drops of water from a straw three days before she died.

“I won’t die,” she said thirty years ago. “Grandma’s magic.

In three weeks time, I came to respect her on a new plain, taking in the broad view of her life for the first time. I sat humbled as my mom applied Vaseline to her lips, as she reminisced with her about memories I had no idea existed.

I talked with her about her initial fear of dying, about her wishes for this day, when all of us would gather here in her honor, about the flowers and the music, about the food. She loved food.

The hours I spent with my Grandma Clare in her final weeks were a gift, though they were not enough. I have far more questions for her now that she’s gone than I ever asked when she was alive.

In the white noise of her cube in the Intensive Care Unit she said the one thing that has and will continue to carry me through my grief.

She said, “All my life, if I wanted to do something, I did it.”

I take solace in knowing, that even as the light approached her, as she drew in her final breath, it was on her own terms.

I talked to my Grandma Clare on the phone at least once a week for thirty years. Some conversations were trivial, like the series of phone calls about American Idol’s Adam Lambert being her television boyfriend. Other conversations were philosophical exercises on any number of topics. A few were lifesaving, in both directions. Almost all of them contained lighting-fast banter. I miss her music box laughter whenever I caught her off-guard with the quick wit I did inherit from her.

Every week for thirty years, our conversations ended with, “I love you more.”

Over time, the exchange expanded to “I love you more, I love you most, I love you more than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.”

This continues to be true, wherever she is now, whatever she’s doing, proof, despite the unplugging of things, of her magic.

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