I have always been blessed with great women in my life, women who took seriously the task of shaping me as I grew.
I lost one of them unexpectedly today. To me, she always had an out-sized personality. She was full of life and laughter and hugs and hospitality. She was warm and welcoming and wonderful. She could scarcely go anywhere in her town without seeing someone she knew. And if she didn’t know the people she saw it always felt that she soon might. She was stubborn and lovely. She had an abiding sense of fair play, and she delighted in practical jokes and the telling of them. Oh, but she enjoyed telling stories.
So I will tell a story about her.
A few years ago some friends of ours had a newborn pass away just before the holidays. Lauren and I are also friends with both sets of the grandparents. As life sorted itself out one set of those grandparents had no one with which to spend their Thanksgiving. I asked if these friends, grieving grandparents, could spend the day with us.
“I don’t see why not,” she said with a tone suggesting there wasn’t any other answer you should expect.
And so it was that she spent one of the most important days of the year ministering with food and laughing and hugging and crying with people who were, until that day, perfect strangers, but were now a perfect part of the family.
I believe at the end of the night she sent them home with big hugs and more food, as was her custom.
Her last few years had been a challenge for her, but her spirit was so often strong and full of the vigor that we always knew.
That was the case when I saw her last, just a few days ago. I am glad for that brief amount of time I was able to spend with her recently, though I wish for more. I am glad for the great trip she recently took, an international adventure with her daughter and son-in-law and his mother.
I am glad to have had her for so long, though all of these years were not nearly long enough to see her smile or watch her make other people laugh. I am glad that she was ours, that she could light a room with her voice and that she could change your day with just her personality. I’m glad for all of the trips we took and for the silly things we did and for all of the stories she told on me. I am glad for all of the great memories she helped make for me. I’m glad for all of the things, big and small, that she told to me over the years. I’m glad to know her favorite hymn. She just said it as a simple statement in between songs at church one day, but it seemed profoundly personal and conspiratorial to me and I find that today it is a great help, knowing that song and agreeing with her about it.
Now I just long to learn every other thing she never told me and to tell her a few more dozen times how important and wonderful she was. I’d like to tell her how doubly fortunate I am, to have, with her, never wanted for anything, and to know that statement to be a lifetime’s gospel.
I’d like to tell her that I have always been blessed with great women in my life, women who took seriously the task of shaping me as I grew. I’d like to tell her how thankful I am that my grandmother was an inexplicably big part of that good fortune.
