Carrie Isabelle Laughrige Barker

She marked her 93rd birthday this past Tuesday. On Wednesday she died in her sleep. She was my grandmother.

In many ways she was the typical grandmother...plump, a wavy mane of snowy white hair and the ability to bake chocolate cookies unmatched by any other. Her cooking was a central fact of Barker family life when I was a kid. Most Sunday afternoons after church all or some of her five sons and their families would gather at Ma Barker's dining room for fried chicken, homemade noodles (often imitated, never matched), mashed potatoes and various vegetables. I can still hear my grandfather (who passed 11 years ago) intoning his usual prayer: "bless this food that it may nourish our bodies, and bless the one who prepared it."

As a young adult, traveling between my new home of Washington, DC and my parents' house in Illinois, I would stop over at my grandparent's in Ohio as a halfway point. I would wake to the sounds of her stirring in the kitchen while the smell of fresh bacon enticed me to crawl out from underneath the quilt that she (or her mother) had pieced and stitched together.

In other ways she was not the typical grandmother. She wasn't overly affectionate or sentimental. She was sharp as a tack and sometimes that sharpness found its way to her tongue. Her father was Scots-Irish and her temperament was more given to a stoic Scot than a jolly Irishman.

And yet -- she had an impish side and when her funny bone was tickled she would let loose with a girlish giggle. My grandad once told me that, after having dated Isabel (she went by her middle name) for five years he finally decided he should get a kiss and "chased her all over the back seat." My grandad might not have used those exact words but that's the meaning I remember and I have no doubt that grandma met those words with a twinkle in her eye, a giggle and sharp retort.

One of my favorite stories of my grandmother is of her pulling her kids in a wagon across the street from the house to the feed mill my grandpa owned at the time. It's an image that squares with my recollection of her: strong, enterprising, independent. The mill, no longer in operation, still stands diagonally across the street from the house where she lived, raised five boys, helped ride herd on countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And she left this earth knowing (if memory serves) two great-great-grandchildren.

Neither she nor my grandad were overly demonstrative or affectionate ( I was shocked when I saw them kiss on New Year's Eve at midnight in 1971 while watching Guy Lombardo ring in the New Year). But they still managed to provide love, strength and support.

One example that sticks vividly in my memory is when one of my pet rabbits was attacked by a dog. It was clear the rabbit -- Gretel -- wouldn't make it. My parents shipped me to spend the night at my grandparents, I guess to spare me the pain of watching my pet die. The next morning my grandmother gave me the news that Gretel had died during the night.

I think I took the news quietly, like a big boy, and walked out to the front porch -- the "sun parlor" as they called it. There I sat and silently mourned the death of my pet, trying not to cry. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my grandparents standing in the doorway, watching, my grandpa with his arm around her waist. I don't know if they knew that I saw them there, but I felt their concern, love and support. It's an image -- the two of them standing in that doorway -- that I think of to this day whenever I feel overwhelmed or alone.

I'm thinking of it now.

Goodnight, Grandma. And say hello to Grandpa.