Nana...

     I always found this photo a little disturbing for some reason...

     I'll start by saying my Mom's Mom, Eva Ferbey could be a bit of a pain. She used to pinch my cheeks, lay wet, sloppy kisses on me, heap guilt trips on my Mom, force us to write her letters, tell me she was lonely and nobody ever comes to visit her and then force us to visit, think she deserved to be treated like the Matriarch of the family and never had cable (really bad for the sleepover when you're a kid). But for whatever reason, I could do absolutely no wrong in her eyes. I used to say I could have chopped up a whole family with an axe and she would have said, "I'm sure my Danny had a good reason for doing what he did." Nana would always say, "I remember my little Danny when he was a baby in the hospital," like she knew something about me no one else did.

    All that having been said she was always really good to me even if she seemed a little misguided at times--Mom used to defend her by saying,"She means well." Nana started a coin and stamp collection for me, contributed $500 to insure my first car...


  ...and gave me $500 for high school graduation inside of this letter I found  the other day in my box of mementos. It's weird because it was the only piece of paper the silverfish attacked...

       My Dad and I found her on the floor of her apartment Christmas day twelve years ago. She was 87 and we all thought she was going to live forever but had suffered a massive stroke-- Nana passed in a week. She was old school Ukrainian and her cure for everything was a stiff shot of Vodka and a couple of aspirin. Her perogies and peach pie were legendary...