My sweet grandmother or "Nona" as we called her, passed away this week from a long battle with Alheztimer's. I love this picture of her when she was my age, so full of life. That's still how I remember her, full of life. She lived in my little town of Truckee California with her parents who came over from Italy in the 1920's (Giovanni Moro and Enrica Scaramella Moro - and I thought my name was Italian). She and my grandfather ran a shop called "Besio's Apparel" for 34 years together. I remember going in there after school to drink a coke and play on with the pretend cash register they had in the back. Every Tuesday night, my brother, sister and I would walk to their house for dinner. We would eat, play games, and watch TV. She was quite the cook: homemade stews and raviolis were a regular menu item.
Nona was the one who taught me how to water plants. I remembered that this week when I took one of our house plants off of a stand and put it in the sink. She would always take a spounge and clean off each leaf, she thought that it made the plants happy; that it tickled them. She and my grandfather were two of the most active people. They would take daily walks around Truckee and collect old arrowheads. She would take pride in mounting these arrowheads on mats and then would frame them and put them up in her house. By the time my grandfather died in 1997, most of the walls of their house were covered in arrowheads. I just think of the wonderful conversations and times they had just walking everyday.
They were also the ones that taught us to fish. We lived by a river growing up and Nona would come down to our house (which was in their backyard) and would bring a styrophome container of worms she would purchase at the corner store. We would sit on this big rock for hours with our shoes off and our feet dangling in the water trying to catch fish.
My family and I are grieving the loss of this wonderful woman, but are also celebrating her wonderful life and how she so generously gave to everyone of us. It's wonderful to think that she has her mind back now and is up in heaven making the most WONDERFUL raviolis!
