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My grandmother Marie Martin passed away today, likely from COVID-19. I’m struggling to gather my thoughts to express something about who she was.
I’m still struggling, but this old post from Facebook is pretty representative
She grew up on a California dairy ranch, the daughter of immigrants from the Azores island of Terceira. She once told me that her mother scolded her because she would find the lace from her skirts torn and trailing on the wire fences around the ranch.
In some ways her life was a traditional one: She became a Catholic mother of 4 and later an enthusiastic grandmother and great-grandmother, someone who knitted and baked snickerdoodles and had a trove of recipes that did not appear to include a single discernible green vegetable.
But she was also someone who, despite her stubborn nature and firm opinions, was ultimately open to change when it mattered.
I knew her as a staunchly progressive person who loved her not-Catholic grandchildren and told me, when I came out to her as bi, “You know, I should have known. Because you’re so smart. And all the gay people are so smart.”
(She also told me later, “I think I would have been a lesbian if I had thought of it,” which I will recount at parties forever.)
She was sharp and political and hilarious and fiercely independent, intent on living alone in her own Roseville apartment well into her retirement, until her family insisted otherwise after one too many health scares.
She apparently taught my aunts only one thing in Portuguese, a song about “the adventures of a turd,” which they gleefully sang once over a game of cards while Grandma pretended to be scandalized.
My sadness today is not for her, but for the rest of us living without her. She had such a full life. She was totally loved. We should all be so lucky.
If you do not believe me about the green vegetables, this is the entire section of her cookbook under “Vegetables and Vegetarian Dishes”
