Grandmother

Esther Royston Graybeal
1920-2012
(Obituary)

My grandmother passed away last night. She was 92. Her health had been deteriorating for some time, so when Dad called and said “I have bad news,” it wasn’t totally a surprise…and yet somehow, it still caught me off guard.

Dad and Grandmother in the backyard of her house, 1987

Grandmother was pretty awesome. She grew up in the Georgetown area of Washington DC but ended up raising a family on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. She was an amateur painter and is part of why I liked art so much, I think. She could play the piano and never complained when I picked out the same songs (badly) over and over again on her piano. She loved to take photos and document how the farm changed over the years. She was always up for a game of Rummikub, and last summer when I saw her for the last time, she beat me soundly at Scrabble — fair and square.

Brian, Grandmother and me at Katie’s wedding, 2005