Eli McCann: Like the blankets she crafted and the hugs she gave, grandma was full of warmth

When I was 9 years old, my family drove from our Utah home to Southern California’s Imperial Valley to stay with my maternal grandmother for a few days in my mom’s hometown.

My grandparents divorced when my mom was a teenager, but they lived the remainder of their lives mere blocks from each other, so it wasn’t uncommon for them to experience an unwanted chance encounter.

On this particular family trip, we attended a party at my uncle’s house, where grandpa showed up unexpectedly. Many of my extended family members had complicated relationships with him. I don’t know whether he was invited or just appeared impromptu. But as soon as he arrived, grandma decided she would quietly duck out and head back to her house.

My mom pulled me aside and asked if I would go home with grandma to keep her company, which I was happy to do. An hour later, grandma popped a bowl of popcorn on her old stove so we could snuggle together under a blanket and watch Whoopi Goldberg’s “Sister Act,” a film that had recently become available on video. It will forever be one of my most vivid childhood memories, grandma’s arm around me, my head leaned back into her shoulder, both of us laughing at the singing nuns.

Globe-trotting with grandma

After I finished college, I started traveling the world with grandma. I had an uncle who decided to take her on as many exotic trips as he could afford, and I tried to tag along as often as I could scrape together the money to do so. Grandma had lived most of her life quite poor and had hardly seen anything beyond her small desert farm town. And now, suddenly, we were walking arm-in-arm through the streets of Cairo, or crossing the canals of Amsterdam. Grandma would hold my arm and say things under her breath in her sweet voice, like, “I can’t believe little old me gets to see something like this.”

She regularly kept us laughing, sometimes intentionally. There was the time a shopkeeper gifted her a papyrus calendar outside of the presence of my uncle, so she opted to inform him in an Oscar-caliber performance that evening that she had stolen it while suffering a diabetic attack. (This left my uncle panic-planning an escape from the country to save his now fugitive senior citizen mother, before she finally fessed up to the prank.)

On one occasion, standing in front of Rome’s majestic Trevi Fountain, her most utilitarian impulses seeped out of her as she mumbled, shaking her head, “such a shame. They did all this work for nothing.”

We still scratch our heads about that one.

After I graduated from law school, the letters and birthday cards she sent me were always addressed to “Esquire McCann,” a sign of her pride that she had a lawyer grandson. I’ve had friends ask me how my active Latter-day Saint grandparents responded to me coming out as gay. I always recall the time, just before my wedding, when she handed me an “Esquire McCann” card and accompanying wedding gift — an Afghan blanket she had spent hours crocheting. She took my hands into hers, looked up at me with misty eyes, and said, “I want you to know I put love into every single stitch for both you and your dear Skylar.”

A grandma-filled life

Living two states away, I never got to visit grandma as often as I would have liked. My husband and I tried to make up for that by FaceTiming her frequently. In December 2023, I called her at 7 p.m. The phone rang six or so times before she answered it, displaying a black screen. I could hear her scramble to turn on a lamp, revealing her exhausted 93-year-old face. I had clearly woken her up.

“Oh, Grandma,” I said, apologetically. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you would be in bed this early.”

Grandma, having trouble seeing me on her phone, held her own device up close to her face and said back to me in a shaky voice, “oh, Honey, your grandma is never too tired to pick up the phone and tell her grandson she loves him.”

I said I would try her another day, and we ended the call. That was the last time we spoke. She died a week later.

Not everyone is afforded a grandma-filled life — in my case, one of birthday cards marked with jittery handwriting and Afghans stitched with love. An old house that always smelled like bread and never required an invitation. A dark sense of humor packaged in a Mother Goose frame.

For those of us fortunate enough to experience these relationships, it really is hard to explain how a little old lady who raised our own parent can so thoroughly embody sunshine and support. And how empty it feels when that little old lady is no longer a phone call away.

The last time I got to hug grandma was at a chaotic family party, the children of my many cousins running wildly around the house. At one point, deep into the evening, grandma crossed the room to come stand quietly next to me. She linked her left arm into my right, the way she had done years before as we traveled the world, and she rested her little white-haired head just below my shoulder.

We stood that way, watching the festivities. She then softly said something she had asked me on many occasions.

“Do you remember that time we watched that Whoopi on my couch, and we just laughed and laughed.”

“Yes,” I told her, squeezing her arm with my left hand. “It’s one of the best memories from my childhood.”

She squeezed my arm in return and smiled.

“Me, too.”

Note to readers • Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. You can preorder his new book, “We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation,” due out Feb. 17.