Tribute to Pauline

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. 

~Edna St Vincent Millay

My paternal grandmother was born Pauline Thelma Neighoff on

February 18, 1923.

Her parents were Thomas Jacob Neighoff and Emma Marie Scheufele.

She had 2 brothers Raymond and Vernon "Buck" Neighoff 

and a sister Evelyn Neighoff.

She married Albert S. Jackson and had 3 children:

Joyce, Patricia and Albert C. Jackson.

She passed away on June 10, 2010

after battling kidney disease and a host of other medical issues.

There are many things I remember about her:

• She loved to garden and work outside.
• She was extremely particular about how the grass was cut  and if you cut it, you better cut as close as possible to items in the yard
• (like large cement planters)
• Continuing on the grass cutting theme- she used to cut grass in bare feet even at our family vacation home in Virginia that barely had grass but did have a lot of pine cones, sticks and other bare foot hazards
• She threatened bodily harm when my cousin and I were especially exasperating, but I can't remember a time when she actually went through with it (her catch phrase was "I'm going to crack you with this" and "this" was whatever she had in her hand at the time.)
• She liked to read her "dirty books" the Enquirer and Star and most of us made fun of them, but secretly read them ourselves
• She loved to read and she and I shared books even after I moved
• When I was a kid she would read to me, though she didn't care for books about dinosaurs because she had trouble pronouncing their names
• She hated her middle name and when I was being particularly bratty, I would call her Thelma sometimes in an exaggerated southern drawl

The one thing I remember the most about her was that no matter what, she had my back.  I could be dead wrong about something, she could know I was dead wrong, but it never mattered.  She would agree with me regardless.  And when I would eventually realize I was wrong, she would never say "I told you so" but make comments about how I should have been right.  It's something that I miss the most- having that person to be your champion even if you're being stupid and making a mistake.  That person who never judges you about any of it.

I miss her like hell.