My first name, Jeffrey, came late in the pregnancy game, given to me not in honor of anyone but simply because my parents liked it. It has British, French and Germanic origins, meaning “peace of a stranger,” “divine peace,” and other harmonious-minded things. The j is a distinctly American invention, however; elsewhere in the world, it’s spelled Geoffrey—which my folks contemplated using until concluding that GGG as my initials was one g too many. JGG has a nicer ring, don’t you think?
Which is to say, my middle name, Grove, was set long before my conception; it honors my mom’s mother’s family. Cora Elizabeth Grove was born in Maryland in 1911, graduated high school in 1928 and the University of Pennsylvania nursing school in 1931, and traveled west to rendezvous with my grandfather, a pastor-in-training whom she married in Las Vegas on Christmas Day 1935. They lived in New Orleans for several years before moving north to Bastrop, La., where she tragically passed away in October 1938, just three days after giving birth to my mom.
Cora’s younger sisters, on the other hand, lived lengthy lives; Frances passed away at age 82 in 2004 and Mary, who I came to know well in her later years, hung on until 97, though her last decade was marred by strokes and aphasia. I occasionally asked her about Cora, curious about the grandmother I never knew. Mary always shook her head, eyes glistening with tears, and said, “She was a good kid,” unable to say much more. To her, Cora was the adventurous older sister blazing a path for semi-independence at a time, the 1930s, when cultural mores restrained many women from pursuing a life beyond the home; it’s why she herself became a nurse.
As Simon & Garfunkel sing, “Preserve your memories/They’re all that’s left you.”
The Old Grey Cat 