Monday, February 28, 2011

Good Bye Dear Grandma


If you are on Facebook and are "friends" with me you probably already know about my Grandma passing and the extremely long trip we had to attend her funeral, there will be more about that insane trip in a later post. For this one I wanted to write about my Grandma.
I have always considered myself very lucky when it came to Grandparents. My Mom's parents divorced and remarried so I had 3 sets of Grandparents growing up. One of my Great Grandfathers was alive until I was 18 and that same year I lost my first grandparent. I have been extremely blessed to know my Grandparents. With the passing of my paternal Grandmother I'm down to one set and I appreciate Grandparents even more as they become fewer.
As you can see, even at the age of 95 she was a beautiful lady still. She never wanted to live this long and would have happily left soon after my Grandpa died about 15 years ago. But she taught us all something about perseverance with her life. She suffered from scoliosis most of her life and though she was in severe pain a lot of her life you never heard her complain. She still did everything she needed to do and more. The doctors said it would eventually kill her, but she just kept right on going. She might have been a little slower and she might have been a little stooped over until she could get her back to straighten out but she did it, and as I inherited some of her back problems I have really come to admire that.
She also was alone a lot raising her 6 kids. Grandpa was often gone frequently with work. I remember her writing me a letter when Paul was on his 1st deployment writing of her love and empathy for me and the situation I was in. That meant a lot to me.
She lost her mother at a very young age. I can't help but compare her just a little bit with other people I've known who have had that happen to them. That is a really formative experience and plenty of people have let that make them bitter and hard, but those two words I could never ascribe to my Grandma.
I will miss you Grandma. But you fought a good fight. You deserve the rest. I love you!

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