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Eulogy I delivered for Grandma
2015-02-17 - 10:08 a.m.


before/after
strangely non-functional guestbook

***** was my grandmother. She loved her husband, her children, and she absolutely adored her grandchildren and great grandchildren. And she was loved by us all.

Grandma loved Christmas and loved having the family in her home for Christmas dinner, hiding elves all around the house for the grandchildren and great grandchildren to find. We would race around while she finished making food for all of us to eat. She got pretty good at hiding the elves, and some years we never found them all. Later on after dinner we’d all play Euchre, and Grandma and Grandpa would make for a formidable euchre team.

One time they visited my brother and me, not on Christmas just another time, and we played them in Euchre. Grandma was getting tired and she said, “We need a four-hand, Dad.” Boom, grampa dealt a loner hand and he took all the tricks. I’m still not sure what happened.

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Grandma loved her children, but she doted on her grandchildren. We all loved going to visit grandma. She always made sure we had something good to eat or something to play with or something to do. She was extremely patient with us and loved through-and-through. I mentioned to my dad once how much I loved visiting grandma, how she was patient with me even when I’m sure I was a handful at times, and he said, jokingly, ‘I don’t know that woman.’

She doted on all her grandkids. And her great grand kids.

She read with us, the grandchildren and the great grandchildren, day after day. She was very patient about it, even if, as we came to find out later, that she did get tired of a few certain particular books. Not all of them, but just a few. Strangely, some of those books may have gone missing from time to time, nobody knew where they were or what happened to them, but she always had something to read to us.
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She loved her husband Robert, most of all. They were inseparable for over 70 years, through thick and thin, bountiful harvest or…not so bountiful harvest, through many an adventure. White water rafting, going to Europe, Alaska, Hawaii, California…the Ocala campground in Florida, she was grandpa’s faithful gal Friday, Dale Evans to his Roy Rogers, she was my Grandpa’s high-school sweet heart, she was the love of his life and he the love of hers.

Grandma roused herself in the hospital when I was there towards the end. She asked me why she was there, and I had to explain to her that she had a stroke. She asked why she had a stroke and I told her what had happened. She said, “I can’t have a stroke. I have to get out of here. Dad needs me.”

Grandpa, her children, her grandchildren and great grandchildren were her life. She took care of us, fed us, bathed us, changed our diapers, read to us, played with us and loved us all. We lost our matriarch and we will miss her.

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When Grandma and Grandpa were young and just getting started, Grandpa used to play the music halls in the area to make some money to make ends meet during the off-season. Grandma used to go with him to some of the shows, but eventually stopped going because it was a lot of time and effort, going from show to show, and she’d said she’d rather stay at home.

When she explained all this to me, she leaned towards me and said in a hush, “And besides, at some of these places people *smoke*!”

Anyway, there’s this picture that I love, which is one of grandpa at one of these shows. He’s holding a saxophone. My uncle **** is next to him holding a trumpet and in the back ground there’s a drummer. And behind them all, interestingly, there is a coterie of about 3 or 4 attractive young women standing there, and they clearly look like they’re having a good time enjoying the music.

After I saw this, I had brought this picture up once or twice, and eventually I was looking at it with grandma and grandpa.

So, I teased her a little, I said, “Grandma, weren’t you worried Grandpa was going to run off with one of these girls?”

Without missing a beat, not a moment’s hesitation, she said, “He wasn’t going anywhere.”

But then there was this pause, you know, as if for the first time in well over fifty years she thought about it.

“***!” she said, “You didn’t run—“

Grandpa cut her off.

“No, I wasn’t going anywhere”

Grandma looked at me and said, “He wasn’t going anywhere.”

That kind of trust, that kind of enduring love seems practically unheard of in this day and age, but that’s what they had…my grandparents. True love. Since high school, over 70 years ago.
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Grandma loved to paint. She got good at it, and could paint outdoor scenes and animals. She loved to square dance and grandpa and grandma traveled all around for various square dancing events. They made a lot of friends square dancing, lifelong friends. Grandma liked to knit. I think everyone in the family got an afghan to keep us warm.

One year she knitted all the grandchildren hats.

She loved her grandchildren unconditionally.

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And she loved taking all the grandchildren up to Lighthouse Park in the summer for a vacation. I think our parents loved it, too, you know, having the children out of the house and out of their hair for a few days....

But I don’t think anyone loved it more than grandma.

Lighthouse Park is an RV park over on the far side of the thumb. It’s a gorgeous little campground, with a rocky beach, and a lighthouse right in the middle of it.

When we were there, we used to go swimming at least once a day. And I used to like to go rock-hopping along the shoreline, jumping from boulder to boulder as kids do.

And grandma said, “Be careful! Don’t go over there! Don’t slip!”

And, of course, I did go over there, and I wasn’t careful, and I did slip.

Somehow I managed to slip, land on my face and open up a really nice sized gash right below my left eye. Blood poured out of my face and washed into the water. Blood was everywhere.

Grandma managed to keep her cool and put a towel over the wound to stop the blood flow. She walked me back to the campground, and it was obvious I was going to need stitches. But the hospital was a ways away and we didn’t have a car.

Mind you, this is before the day of cellphones. There were no cellphones. There were no phones there. It was a campground. And grandpa was back home working on the farm.

But grandma didn’t give up. She walked from camper to camper pleading for a ride to the hospital for her grandson who had a bad cut and needed stitches. At that time of day and in the middle of the week there just wasn’t anyone around with a car.

Anyway, sooner or later grandma eventually found a guy, someone we didn’t know, and we hopped into his car to go to town to get the stitches I needed to close up the wound. We got to the hospital just fine, and the whole thing took a little while, but 13 stitches on the inside and 12 stitches on the outside and I was good as new, and it was time to go back to the park.

Our ride, though, chose to wait at a bar. It reeked like a distillery in his car.

And the conversation was odd. To this day, I’m not exactly sure what he said to grandma that finally pushed her over the edge, but I’m sure it was a suggestion that somehow wasn’t polite or could be taken the wrong way. I think it was a poor joke or comment that somehow involved me.

And grandma turned on this guy with the blazing fury of a thousand suns. The tongue lashing she gave this guy was of an epic proportion. He must have felt two inches tall when she was done with him, and he was silent the rest of the way back.

Whatever was said or whatever had happened had been swiftly and decisively dealt with. In that moment, she had the ferocity of a lioness on the Serengeti and he was a jackal. When she was done with him, he was an absolute nothing.

And we made it back to the campground just fine.

I never really spoke to anyone about the last part of how I got my scar until I mentioned it to my dad a few years before he passed. How grandma had handled that man, had made me feel safe in a kind of dicey situation, and how she had protected me, loved me, and kept me safe.

And that’s what I think of when I think of my grandmother. Someone who loved her grandchildren and great grandchildren all so much she would do anything for us, ferocious in her defense of us, patient as the powers of the earth with us and at the same time was as gentle with us as the summer breeze.

She took care of us all. She loved us. She loved us all so very, very much.

Everyone should be so lucky in this life to be so loved.

And we will dearly miss her.

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