Today would have been my grandmother Marie’s 100th birthday. She passed away on January 19, 2006 and was buried a few days later in the blistering cold.

Born in 1920, her mother Theresa died when she was six years old of a brain aneurysm. She grew up in her Aunt Ida and Uncle Andrew’s home alongside her cousin LaVerne, whom she loved as a sister. She married Harry, my grandfather, in 1939 (she was nineteen, he was twenty-one). They moved to Omaha, Nebraska where they eventually built a house. In 1957, Marie and Harry adopted my dad and his brother.

Gramma (always spelled “Grandma” but the phonetic is more fun) made it her life’s work to spoil her grandchildren with cookies and playtime and expeditions into the yard. Her house was filled to the brim with her own watercolor and acrylic paintings (still-lifes of flowers and landscapes) and painted ceramic wares (a life-sized cat, cookie jars, salt and pepper shakers, flour canisters, candy dishes, pumpkins, Christmas trees, figurines), a few crocheted items, and Christmas ornaments. These were outpourings of a creative spirit and generous heart.

She died fourteen years ago, but to be honest it feels much longer than that. There is something remarkably sad about losing someone before you’re fully an adult… before you have the desire to confide in your grandparents about everyday life – the mundane or the silly or the exciting – or to ask deeper questions. Not just, say, about the Great Depression or World War II, but her thoughts on growing up, on family, on the shape of her life.

Gramma was developing Alzheimer’s disease when I was in high school. I was at college in another city when she was admitted to a care facility and passed away a few months later. We had only a narrow window of time to know each other as adults before she succumbed to the fog. In some ways that makes her a bit of a mystery. But she was a vital part of the first twenty years of my life and hardly a stranger.

I loved exploring the nooks and crannies of her house. She always had candy and homemade cookies ready in tins for us on the stairs to the attic. The attic itself was where the guest bedroom was, where she did her sewing, where endless artifacts were stashed. My sister and I liked to rifle through the trunk full of odd scraps of fabric, look through the doll clothes Gramma made for charity. Sometimes we helped her iron those scraps. It felt so special, important.

More vivid images: the little “kitchen witch” she had suspended, broom and all, over the sink. The Barbies kept downstairs for us to play with – she painted the hair of one of the Ken dolls so they wouldn’t get mixed up (or fought over). The ancient cabinet television. Her avocado green rotary phone. The foot-shaped rock and paperweight (she painted toes on it). The ancient analog alarm clock-radio. Her jade plants and cacti. Her quintessential old lady sayings: “to each his own, said the old maid as she kissed the cow.”

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She’d let us investigate her jewelry boxes and play with the laundry chute. She let me name her (vintage!) Ginny dolls and Lladro figurines. We read through her 60s era children’s books, and she played Parcheesi, Mouse Trap and Twister with us. I loved her vintage typewriter (I wish I had it now) and a record player (33s and 45s). We’d race around the basement on an old tricycle years after outgrowing it. We’d help her pick tomatoes in the summer and apples from her two trees in the fall, hunt for Easter eggs, and ride in the cart behind Papa’s lawn mower.

We lost Papa in 1996. He was a quiet man I remember smoking cigars at the kitchen table. But he was present, watching us all the whole time, leaving his mark in other ways. He was the one who’d fasten our Barbie’s complicated ballet shoes, built me my first doll bed, appeared at every family birthday. In his last few months, Gramma cared for him at home.

I’ve kept momentos of those days. Her artwork, especially. These came from moments she was happiest, not to be the next Georgia O’Keefe but for the sheer enjoyment of it. Flowers and meadows, trees and snow: she returned to them many times and never in the same way. I take pride that very few people in the world have a Marie Boston original.

Today, I went back to our family videos, recorded on Nannie’s camcorder in 1990 and 1991. All of my grandparents are gone now. But these recordings – of children’s birthdays, family visits to the beach in Maine and general slice-of-life chaos – preserve their voices and their personalities. I am grateful to have them.

At my fifth birthday, Gramma was right there beside me, a part of the ceremonial de-wrapping, admiring each gift, giving me her full attention. In the background of another clip, she was encouraging my then two-year-old cousin, Nick, to climb into the empty box he was exploring. In the foreground, Nannie and my mother were trying to clean up coffee stains. Gramma darted up to help – I’d forgotten how energetic she was in those days.

This is the grandmother I remember. And those memories are a treasure. Today, on her 100th birthday, I’ll celebrate with a bar of chocolate (how she loved chocolate!) and a nod the winter scenes that adorn my wall.

Gramma, you are missed, but you’re still with us. Happy Birthday!