Goodbye, Grandmommy

Mikhaela, with scotch, by the Kennebec River in Solon, Maine

As regular cartoon readers will remember, my beloved grandmother Melba died in March, leading me to draw a rare non-political cartoon, Melba and Me. This past weekend, I went up to Solon, Maine with the rest of her children and grandchildren to say goodbye as a family. It was a perfect fall weekend--the leaves were turning colors and the ladybugs were infiltrating our beds in the old farmhouse.

So why the scotch? I can assure you I'm not a hard-drinking woman, and neither was my grandmother--in fact, she never touched the stuff. But her last week in the hospital, when the nurse asked if she wanted anything to drink, Melba told her "Scotch--100 percent." So we bought a big bottle of scotch, poured it into little plastic cups, and drank a toast to Melba Ruby Reid on the banks of the Kennebec River (her last wish was that her ashes go out to sea). My dad put on my grandmother's favorite anti-Bush T-shirt. And my brother and I rolled up our jeans, climbed down over the rocks at the edge of the river, and poured our grandmother's ashes and the rest of the scotch into the river.

The little sketch above is from a photograph my dad took of me finishing off the last of the bottle. I love you, Grandmommy.