Noni

As the oldest grandchild, it was up to me (ok, really up to my parents) to decide what name I would call each respective set of grandparents. When I was born, it was determined my Mom’s parents would be “Grandma & Grandpa” & my Dad’s parents would be “Nona & Papa” (in honor of our Italian-ness).

The only problem was that one year old me couldn’t say “Nona” – I said “Noni.” The next oldest grandchild, my cousin Tyler, came along six months after me & also adopted “Noni” as the preferred name. And so it went, for 14 grandchildren & five great-grandchildren: Noni she was.

My Noni passed away a week & a half ago. Today B & I are traveling to Minnesota to honor her life. There hasn’t been a single moment in the past week that I haven’t thought about her, haven’t missed her. She thought we were nuts for traveling the amount we did. I called her every Sunday, often from an airport or a train station. She’d always marvel over the phone, “I don’t know why you have an apartment – you should get a Winnebago!” When we bought our house last fall, she wondered what it would do to our travel budget. Ironically, she & my grandfather were quite the travelers themselves: they’d jump in the car & drive from Minneapolis down to visit family in Texas. The first time I visited Barbados, shortly after my Dad moved there, my grandparents joined us. They cruised with the best of them, across the Panama Canal & all over the Caribbean (coincidentally, they went on the Celebrity Equinox 10-Day Caribbean Cruise almost exactly one year before we did – but they sailed Aqua Class!). They loved to travel & explore – their country boy (he grew up in small town Colorado) meets city girl (she grew up in NYC) sense of adventure carrying them through life. She was married to my grandfather for 56 years & had a marriage I can only hope to emulate: honest & loving.

I’ll miss her every day, but know that the legacy she has left behind means she’s not really gone. I’ll leave you with a verse of the psalm, her favorite, that I’ll be reading at the burial service tomorrow:

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.

I don’t normally write things this personal on my blog, but I wanted to share a little piece of her with you. I hope you’re lucky enough to have a Noni in your life.