Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My mom, Jeanette Louise Tucker, fell last Tuesday morning while trying to get out of a chair at Westward Heights in Lander, hitting her head. After a promising initial diagnosis in the emergency room at Sage West Hospital in Lander, she was flown to Banner Health in Casper. She smiled and spoke with us as she was loaded into the ambulance before taking the short flight to Casper. She began to fail on the flight and never woke up. She passed away early Friday morning.
My daughter, Staci Orbell, is pinch-hitting for this week’s column. I couldn’t match her eloquence and timely words. Here is her tribute to Grandma. Thanks Dolly.
My last living grandparent, “Grandma Jan,” as she was known by the family and many of our friends, passed away early this morning.
The emotional response to death is such a complex phenomenon. Each instance is unique, which is a beautiful and yet another unpredictable part of the human experience. While I and many of my family members certainly grieve her departure, there is so much relief. Relief that her pain and suffering was quite brief; relief that although she had lost some of her independence in these last years, she fairly well maintained her sharp mind until the end, and once it was apparent that that was gone due to her injury a few days ago, she was blessed with the dignity of a fast death; relief that she was able to pass away peacefully, just minutes from where she was born and raised; relief that questions of her remaining/longer term living disposition were quickly decided for the family. Most of all, we are confident she is now at eternal peace and reunited with my grandfather, “Goong” and so many loved ones in heaven. This is a source of joy and hope for us all.
When I think of Grandma Jan, I think of laying down and growing roots. Grandma Jan (Jeanette Louise Gasser Tucker) never forgot where she came from – she was a Wyoming gal. She was born and raised on the family-named Gasser Road right outside the city limits of Riverton, Wyoming. She grew up merely feet from where my brother and I, too, grew up, where my parents live today. Her childhood front yard was what I knew as Great Granny Gasser’s (her mother) front yard, where us grandkids would play on the 2-person merry-go-round type wooden seat and hunt our eggs on Easter among the big trees – those were the biggest trees to me as a kid.
However, her status as a Wyoming woman was completely by choice. She left Fremont County and she and Goong experienced life all over the United States (and Puerto Rico), thanks to his time in the service. After he was discharged, though, they came back to put down roots, started by her Swiss immigrant parents, Eugene and Clara, by coming back to Wyoming for good. They lived many years on their farm on Summerhill Road near Pavillion, a rural road from which she chose the name. The name Summerhill Road, at least in my opinion, makes it sound like a beautiful place. When the sunflowers were in bloom and lining the road, it was especially beautiful. The kitchen motif in her home after the farm was all sunflower-related. Perhaps this stems back to the days on the farm.
As a granddaughter visiting her grandparents on the farm, I admittedly struggled sometimes. We often joke in my family that we have a “Green Acres” type of dynamic with my mom and me being more apt to living in town – Grandma Jan and I were quite different in that regard. As a kid, I didn’t quite understand the love she had for her animals, especially in the context of the farm — in my lifetime she had the outdoor barn cats that would come and sit on the window and look inside, Doofey the opinionated, Monopoly-playing cat (you read that right), Yeller, the fluffy, more docile cat, and Sheppie, the always faithful farm dog.
Looking back, especially now with pets of my own, I have an appreciation for her love of animals. She always had concern for the stray cats in her neighborhood that visited her home when she moved in town. In her later years when we really didn’t know what gifts to buy her for birthdays and Christmas, her main request was cat food so she could feed her strays. Likewise, she supported Goong in caring for their livestock all those years. Like many farmhouses, the entryway between the garage and the house always had a faint smell of cattle as that’s where she and Goong nursed struggling calves and housed their supplies.
That same entryway held her well-known large deep freezer that always seemed to be stocked with Schwan’s ice cream treats. If you weren’t wanting a cold treat you could opt instead for one of the many Little Debbie snacks she always had stocked for the grandkids (my weakness for Strawberry Shortcake Rolls can be blamed on her). She made our days and nights out on the farm memorable in other ways, too. One day us grandkids and our friends were out visiting and wanted to run through the sprinklers in their yard. We didn’t have swimming suits, so she improvised and gave us pairs of her underwear to run around in – and we had a blast. She also loved the show Family Matters – our family shares a love for Steve Urkel thanks to her. On the Friday nights we’d spend at the farm, we’d watch TGIF and all sat down to watch “Urkel” together. She recorded many of those re-runs on VHS tapes that we’d watch over and over again.
She collected a lot of things…a lot. She loved carousel figurines, had a bathroom decked in Coca-Cola merchandise, and perhaps was most well-known for her massive paper doll collection. The paper dolls were never allowed to be cut or drawn on, but I would still play with them by taking a blank sheet of (dot matrix) paper and tracing the outline of the doll on the page and their outfits. My personal favorites of hers were her Princess Diana paper doll books. That massive wall of paper dolls that lined the hallway wall on the farm as well as in town was a fixture of Jan Tucker.
We don’t have too many traditions in our family, but one tradition we had was central to Grandma Jan: Christmas Eve. Most of my Christmas Eves were spent at Grandma and Goong’s house, having a feast that included her mini sandwiches, Little Smokies, and sparkling cider, and lighting real candles on the Christmas tree and singing Silent Night before us grandkids tore into the mound of presents that they got us each year. We were blessed. When we were going through her house last summer to prepare to move her to assisted living, I found that she still had the JC Penney Christmas catalog from 1995 where little Staci had circled what she wanted for Christmas (in addition to catalogs spanning back to the 1960s…again, she collected a lot of things)!
She had a heart for helping the less fortunate or when there was a need, finding a way to help where she could. She and Goong were faithful supporters of the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch in North Dakota – a residential treatment and education organization providing psychiatric and spiritual care. She also believed in supporting Christian education. She was my first Sunday school teacher and had a set of puppets that she used in class. I can’t believe I still remember those (one was a spider puppet!).
When she and Goong purchased their final home in town, they allowed the front part of their house to be used as the preschool classroom for Trinity Lutheran School that year. I went to preschool, taught by my Aunt Susie, in my Grandparents’ home. Not many people can make a claim like that. When I would sit in her formal living room and see her carousel figurines in the recessed display shelves, I would still envision the playdoh that once sat in tubs on those same shelves and smell its many scents and remember playing with the Fisher Price doctor kit on the circle time rug where the formal dining room came to be.
She frequently told me that she and I were alike in our tendency to save rather than spend, and I’ve been so blessed by those roots she and Goong put down for us. She was especially astute when it came to financial matters – knowing all the tax laws and investments. She used that knowledge to invest so she could give her grandkids gifts to be used for our education or other life events – even if that means she went with less for herself.
Another way we were alike was our love of music. Grandma’s musical career mostly spanned through high school. Out of all of her grandkids, I was the one who shared her band geek DNA. She played the clarinet and would talk about how much she loved being in band with her teacher, Mr. Van Velson. She saw much of herself in me as I, too, loved the high school band experience and treasured my music instructors. It was through Grandma’s roots – family connections — that I learned how to play the flute from my second cousin Gary, Grandma’s nephew, son to her eldest brother Eugene and best friend Mary. My flute lessons started right in the same house Grandma grew up in.
She and Goong were part of my day-to-day growing up, especially after they moved into town. In elementary and middle school, I would walk to her house for lunch about once a week just to have some special time with them. They were there at every Grandparents’/special guest day during Lutheran School’s week every year and would bring a Lunchable for lunch, which at the time was a delicacy in our world! For many years, she wrote the end-of-the-year program for our school and through those programs, I also got to learn more about her and songs she loved as she peppered them into each production. If I was sick, they were often found swinging by the house to check on me. She and Goong were also often on duty to drive me to piano lessons after school and I’m grateful for their involvement to allow me to attend these lessons.
They were at every performance and event – be it dance or piano recital, band or choir concert, and even made it to the many sporting events in my illustrious (not) athletic career. I recognize just how much of a gift this day-to-day support and interaction with my grandparents was, especially now with children of my own.
I am blessed to have had Grandma Jan with me in my nearly 37 years of life. It’s such a gift to us that she got to know my daughters as well as her other 10 great-grandchildren, too. While her absence will certainly shake the foundation of the concept of “home” as I know it, I am so grateful that she took the time to grow those roots throughout my childhood and into what they’ve become today.
Love you, Grandma Jan.