about grandma

July 4, 1989

Dear Dad,

I wanted again to express to you how sorry I feel about Grandma's death. It was news that I knew would come sooner or later, but it was still difficult to be philosophical about losing her. Laura and I feel very sad not to be able to look forward to visits with Grandma. We also had dreamed that she might have been able to see her first grandchild.

Since meeting Laura, she tells me how often I retell childhood stories that take place at Grandma's house – how much she influenced us as children. I think her influences as a collector of children's books, a legacy that she left to us through your devotion to reading to us as children, has had a major impact on my life.

It may seem strange, but as I think of how to encapsulate my feelings about Grandma, I keep coming back to a certain memory that doesn't even take place in Iowa City, or have anything to do with Grandma herself. I vividly remember my first reading, as a boy, of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. I found the book on our shelves at home – I don't know whose it was. I remember sitting down in the living room on a winter evening, probably around Christmas time, and finding myself absorbed in the story. The friendly woman relative that Capote describes immediately was Grandma to me. I remember how strongly moved I was at his reflections on this remarkable friend, and how I was stirred first by the account of the loss of her dog, and then by the story of her death, pictured as the free flight of a child's kite in the sky. Like the woman in the story, Grandma took the time to fly kites with us.

We miss her.

Along the lines of family information for her obituary, Laura Lee Moseng was born on November 11, 1962 in Madison to Barbara Sue (Bruce) Moseng and Myral Julian (Mo) Moseng. We had our first date on May 19, 1979, and were married on July 2, 1983.

All our love

jim