Thanksgiving moments

Snippet of a conversation I had with Hailey’s great-grandmother on Thanksgiving:

Great Meemaw:  So then we dug up the rest of the body and took him home to daddy.

Me:  So you…brought a dead body home to your father…for Easter?

Great meemaw (disturbingly matter-of-fact):  Yep.

I’d share the rest of this conversation with you but I’m saving it for my memoirs.

**********

Updated to add, um…no, ya’ll.  It was not an animal.  It was a very human corpse.  Digging up a pet turtle is not be memoir worthy.  Kids carrying dead bodies home to their daddy and storing the corpse in the potting shed for decades?  That’s memoir worthy.

45 thoughts on “Thanksgiving moments

Read comments below or add one.

  1. Dug up the *rest* of the body? It uh wasn’t all together?

    Put it in what?

    Jenny, that’s got to be some story! And I have to wait how long for the memoirs?

    It might beat the “my greatx3-grandmother was an axe murderer” story.

    Julie
    Using My Words

  2. OMG, it isn’t the fact that your great-grandmother is a grave robber that freaks me out…it is the fact that someone else in the universe calls their grandmother “Meemaw!” I thought my children were the only ones!

  3. Sorry Sandy, but no. The body was very, very human.

    Julie, you great, great, great grandmother was a murderer? So was my great, great uncle! No wonder we get along so well.

  4. …because on Easter, he would rise again? I’m just asking, was that supposed to be part of the reasoning here?

  5. Ah yes…reminds me of an Easter conversation w/ my Grandma one year. This was eons ago, I was still in college and somebody had brought up a Spring Break/Florida story they’d seen on the news. I believe it was about the ready availability of profilactics. (why we were discussing this at the Easter table is a whole nutha topic)

    Me: Can you believe it? They were passing these things out on the beach?

    Grandma: Oh, I know. They’re wonderful. Especially if you get one that’s kept real clean. Dad and I use the same one every year.

    (blink, blink) (pause)

    Me: (through the mashed potatoes stuck in my throat) Uh…condoms Gram, not Condos.

  6. Wow, that completely puts my 5th “grammie” of Grandpa Causey in perspective(3 and 4 were the same woman, I think). She has a collection of “tar baby” dolls that she keeps shiny with Endust, and she will announce this at the top of her freaking lungs in the subway in Boston surrounded by people who will beat the crap out of me for her saying this. But I’m pretty sure she would have told me about any exhumations by now….ooh, also, I’m sure you are already aware, but Amy Sedaris’s brother David wrote a really cool book called (I think)”Me Talk Pretty Some Day” which describes Amy at length. Including her purchase of half a fat suit. Y’know, for your serial killer thing/ stalker thing with her…

  7. Johanna, it was actually because of the fat suit story that I fell in love with Amy. The fact that she’s a great writer is just a bonus to her bizarreness that made me want to stalk her.

    Robin – I’m still giggling.

    Lawyermama – We need to have drinks. Again.

  8. I bet it’s a good one! Let me know when the memoirs are published! I think your work is fascinating, as it is! and I’d love to read it if it were published!

  9. i’m not sure i’m going to heal up and hair over from this one….

    p.s. i hate that you are mere minutes from me and i’m not seeing you!!!

  10. That sounds like a conversation Bossy had over thanksgiving, but it wasn’t about digging up dead bodies, it was about digging up past grievances. Does that count?

  11. Hmmmm… My favorite Thanksgiving Comment this year was from my grandmother as well…

    Grandma: “Well, you know – Andrea’s husband does as much of the cooking as she does. Can you IMAGINE!”

    Isn’t family FUN? In her defense, her chicken and stuffing is like no other.

  12. Jenny,

    My mother, sandy of myanderings, turned me on to your blog some time ago and i love it. Since you have such an unusally morbid (in a cute way) view of things, i just had to tag you, so tag your it. See my blog (the post titled ‘School of Hard Knocks’) for directions. Cant wait to read it.

    Julie (who played with dead animals as a child)

  13. Can we all look forward to meemaw’s dead body story in your next book? It sounds quite intriguing! I don’t recall reading it in either Furiously Happy or Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: