Kathryn Irwin (second granddaughter)

Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto. Obviously, Tia has talked about many things that were so important.…So what I wanted to say was, I grew up—I was born and raised in Australia, I’m Terry’s daughter—and Grandmothers in Australia were all Grannies. They were something quite different from what Grandmommy turned out to be. So I spent 23 years in Australia, and I had this idea of what a Grandmother was, which was this small person in the side of the room that no one really treated as a human being anymore, who baked cookies—I’m not sure—but it was very different, and when I met Libby Dean and started spending more time with her, as I did because I moved and started living in California, I met this person who was contrary to anything that a grandmother, from my Australian experience, was. And what she was to me was: she wasn’t just a grandmother, she was a friend. She was my friend. She was a really good friend.

Every time I came here, we didn’t just bake cookies, we went to the museums. She introduced me to three generations of Wyeth art, which I’m quite taken in by. We went to Hagley and Winterthur and D.C. and New York and the theatre, and I went to painting class with her, where she kicked my ass. She was just so interesting, we would do things like, a couple of years ago when we had an eclipse, we stayed up until 10, 11, 12 at night with cups of Chamomile tea and we watched the eclipse together. Who does that with their Grandmother? That’s your best friend.

And that was the great thing about Libby—she was a great friend. So I always feel privileged to know that my grandmother was not only my grandmother, who is this part of this long line of amazing women—I think you’ll acknowledge that there’s a lot of women in this family, and I really feel sorry for the men in this family—but she’s just incredibly special in that way, to have that kind of relationship, up to 93. That woman was kicking my butt at Sudoku, right to the end.

The only other memory that I’d like to leave you with is, a few years ago my brother, my father, Lisa, and myself were with Grandmommy in Naples in Florida, and she and I were headed to watch the sunset--with Vodka, because it was that hour, and she tripped and fell and she got a bump on her head and it bled, and of course Lisa and I had to spend hours in emergency with her, which was very traumatic for me. And a couple of weeks ago--I have to say I’m very fortunate that my husband’s work has brought him to New York recently so I have spent a lot of time over the past 4-5 months with my Grandmother, which I think is just a very fortunate thing--she and I went to the movies, The King’s Speech, which she’d seen but she didn’t hear it so she wanted to go again and sit closer so she could hear it. And she hit a stand and she fell. And I was like, “Oh my God, on my watch—a second time!”

And I literally remember saying, “Grandmommy, do we have to tell Lisa? She’s going to kill me!” And Grandmommy was saying, “No, no! We’ll get free tickets!”

And we did.