Violet Velma Coppock (1921-2012)

I was lucky, for such a long, long time. I had all four of my grandparents until I was almost thirty. It wasn’t until August that my last grandparent passed away.

With all four grandparents, there was nothing sudden or unexpected about their deaths. They each lived long lives, and their deaths were followed by the illnesses and declines that one expects. After all, all four of them made it into their nineties.

But, despite their advanced ages, and despite the illnesses and hospital visits that proceeded their deaths, when each one passed away, it was somehow shocking. Despite the fact you can see it coming for years in advance, nothing prepares you for their actually being gone.

Each time I’ve been left with the feeling that I could have known them better. Each time I’ve felt that there were conversations that we could have had but didn’t. With each loss, I felt that I’ve squandered the time I had with them.

But at the same time I know that these feelings aren’t entirely rational. We know our loved ones as well as we can given the time and circumstances in which we have them in our lives. And everyone is different, so our interactions with of each them are naturally different.

And, some people are just plain hard to know. My grandma Coppock was a such a person. I knew her as well as I could. Everyone in the family knew her as well as they could, but she was not an open book. She was guarded, and a bit stoic. Emotion did not come easily to her. She was perfectly capable of expressing herself, but she didn’t care to discuss anything personal.

Grandma Coppock was not at all the stereotypical grandmother. She didn’t dote over us. She didn’t fawn over us. She did not spoil us. She could be terse, and she wasn’t shy about letting you know if you’d disappointed her.

Some of my clearest memories of her are from when I was a kid and she taught me to get things for myself, and to put them back when I was done. Whenever I asked to borrow, say, a pair of scissors, she never failed to sternly remind me in advance that those scissors had better be returned to their proper place, and in good working order.

Despite this, there was never a question that she loved us. She showed it in various ways that a kid might miss but an adult appreciates. She was the grandma that showed her love by treating each of us as capable, dependable, and consistent members of the family. She showed it not by bragging about us, but by expecting us to be respectful, resourceful, contributing people, regardless of your age.

Within the family Grandma was known as someone who did not give compliments. She just didn’t. I never asked her about this, but I also felt that I already knew the answer. She didn’t give compliments because in her mind a compliment was not praise. A compliment is instead an admission that your expectations had been low in the first place. In order to deserve a compliment, you need to exceed exceptions, and her expectations of  us, while not unrealistic, were high.

Another reason she might have had for refraining from compliments is that she didn’t want anyone to “get a big head.” And this tendency is shared by most of the family: quiet competence is always preferable over bragging, even if the bragging is well founded. Especially if the bragging is well-founded.

But again, these are things that a kid doesn’t appreciate. As a kid I knew she loved me but I couldn’t say how I knew. In contrast to my paternal grandmother, who doted on us and stuffed us full of our favorite foods and snacks, with Grandma Coppock, you ate what everyone else was having, and that was that.

With Grandma Trujillo (“Nina” as we called her), getting your favorite meal was expected. With Grandma Coppock, there were no such assurance. And therefore, even though this is not fair to all the overtly sweet people in our lives, the smallest kind gesture from someone that is not normally sweet goes a long, long way.

And so it was, when I was in my late teens — after I’d left home for college, I was visiting the ranch for Christmas when I happened to mention to my cousin Rachel that I love grandma’s fudge, but preferred fudge without nuts. I didn’t know that grandma had heard me. Her fudge always had nuts in it and I fully expected that it always would. But, the next Christmas, and every Christmas afterward until she stopped making fugde, I’d visit her house and find two jars of fudge, one with nuts and one without.

She never said a word about it, and I didn’t either, but we both knew what it meant.

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