My grandmother died on Easter Sunday, 1983. They gave her mouth to mouth and spat the chocolate out in between huffs and puffs of desperate effort. There was a party at her place. She was obese and 72 years old – a bad combo. The family went to shit after that. They fought over the house that they inherited. I have good memories of that house and good memories of my grandmother but the haze of the sugar highs give me few memories of Easter. I was hungover as hell on Easter Morning in 1984 and a storm had come through with a foot of snow in Milwaukee and Mrs. Tyson came downstairs and said “I bet our California boy has never seen snow on Easter Sunday.” And my memorable retort is still told in some quarters of that city: “Mrs. Tyson, I’ve never seen snow on Christmas morning”.
We spent every Christmas and Easter at my grandmother’s house but not after she died. I only went back once, to see my uncle in 1993. Without the smell of my grandfather’s pipe and the squawk of my grandmother’s parrot it wasn’t even the same house. I still haven’t seen snow on Christmas. It isn’t a priority.