We buried my grandmother today. She was 95, almost 96, and up to a few months before she died, had a full, active and vital life. The ailments of old age didn't stop her, cancer didn't stop her, blindness didn't stop her.

A bout of pneumonia that hit her around Christmas, and never really let go, forced her from her home into assisted living. It returned three months later, stronger this time, and she fought the Reaper for over two weeks until she gave in on Easter Day, that most revered of all Christian holy days. Grandma was, above all, a devout Catholic.

I never spent a lot of my life sifting through my memories of my grandmother, because she was a person of the here and now; so strong, so alive, it was hard to believe she would ever die. It wasn't until near the end that I started to remember the times we had together.

One of my earliest and richest memories is of me sitting in the kitchen at her house on Cumberland Street in Harrisburg when I was three or four years old. My uncle Bob was there, eating breakfast; my aunt Pat was rushing around, getting ready to go somewhere. I was eating buttered toast.

Grandma made me a cup of cocoa. It wasn't a powder dissolved in hot water. She made it from real milk and real cocoa and whatever else grandmas put in their cocoa along with love. I remember it like it was yesterday; I can almost taste it. It may have been the first cup of cocoa I ever had; perhaps the best. It was the real deal.

And that was Grandma -- the real deal. She told it like it was, without the sugar frosting. She lived her religion and maintained her devotion to Catholicism in her roles as wife and mother.

She worried about and bragged about her grandchildren, even though to our faces she'd as soon kiss us as smack our butts. It was all love.

Memories are all we have left, but even so, she's left us a lot.

DL