My grandmother died on February 25, 2012. She was born on February 25, 1925. She died on her birthday. That she died on her birthday has been both a sad and sweet thing for us to accept. Sad, of course, because we lost her and feel her absence very deeply. Sweet, because she went away to celebrate her second birth in heaven. She got to celebrate her re-birthday in heaven on her actual birthday.
We had her funeral service yesterday. We must've had at least 3-4 hundred people come to her visitation. What a legacy! She would have been "tickled pink" to know how special people thought she was. At her funeral, we shared portions of Proverbs 31. Never were truer words spoken. She was a woman to be revered because of her faith and because of the choices she made to live a life worthy of praise.
Crazy me said that I would collect memories and recognitions of who my grandmother was and put them together and share these words at her funeral. I'm actually very glad that I did it (and very glad that I was able to get through it!) She was a very wonderful grandmother. The picture below is a picture of my grandmother with most of her grandchildren. Below the picture, I'm sharing the speech that I came up with to celebrate my grandmother's life from the perspective of her grandchildren.
Our Grandmother
Our Grandmother went by many names. Grandma, Grandma Mildred, MeMe, Memaw. Whatever you called her, it didn’t really matter, because what really mattered was how great of a grandmother she was to all of us. In order to share this with those gathered here today, I asked my cousins to share their favorite memories and their best description of who our grandmother really was. I’m sharing most of what they shared with me.
One characteristic of our grandmother that came up repeatedly was her ability to love unconditionally. She made us feel safe and loved. There was an understood expectation that if we respected her, she would respect us. She’d always greet us with a smile and hug. It felt that way even if we were communicating over the phone. It was okay to just drop by whenever you felt the need to visit, and if you dropped by, you could usually expect to stay for a while and probably would get offered some type of meal. It was a meal that she fed you even if you said that you didn’t want to eat. It usually included way more food than you would need, and it was always a good meal. Our grandmother was sweet, generous, and precious. She cared about the things that we liked, too, and often would make sure to make a certain food if she knew that we liked it. Two of her recipes that were enjoyed the most were her squash casserole and her red velvet cake. She also made the best lemonade/sweet tea!
For many of us, our grandmother was a symbol of a hard worker. She’d come from a family with very little, and for most of her life, she had to work hard to make ends meet for her family. Because of this, she lived very simply. This was a lesson in itself. She didn’t have fancy gadgets to entertain us when we stayed with her. Instead, we spent our time playing football or hide & seek in the backyard, looking for Indian money, and catching lightning bugs and putting them into jars at the end of the night. Sometimes, some of us would even perform for her and our great-grandmother. She helped us be adventurous. It was never a boring day at our grandmother’s house. There were also many nights spent at our grandmother’s house. These typically included all the hash browns you could eat in the morning. She never complained about working hard, either. She just did what she had to do, and sometimes, she did more than she had to do. She was there for many of the important moments in our lives. She didn’t have to tell us that she loved us or that she was proud of us. We just knew.
Our grandmother was a lady of character. She was a true lady and wonderful role model. Her life was not easy, and she experienced several tragedies in her life that easily could’ve made her embittered by life. I like to think that God knew what she was going to experience and gave her the ability to survive and become who she was. She had a strong belief in God and shared this faith with her family. She also clung to the family she had, teaching us how important it is to appreciate time with your family. She taught us many lessons by sharing stories from her past, as well as passing on that trait to her children, who would continue to share family stories. We may not have been fortunate enough to know all of our relatives, but we knew stories. We knew about what they were like, and because of that, it feels though we are part of a great legacy. One of the biggest gifts for many of us was having the opportunity to see our grandmother fall in love with her perfect mate. She and Charles became a team of loving grandparents. They helped our families blend like we were always meant to be together.
There was no safer place in the world than our grandmother’s home. She gave us as much love and time as she could. For some of us, that meant that she was the one who pulled our loose teeth or colored with us at the kitchen table. She sometimes pushed us to be better people, asking us to do things that might’ve been hard for us. She also adopted our spouses as grandchildren. There were no tests that you had to pass to be accepted in our grandmother’s life. She just simply loved. She was everything that a grandmother should be and more.
And so, in closing, we’d like to express our thankfulness in having been blessed with such a wonderful grandmother. She was perfect, she was beautiful, she was fun, and she was ours. She gave us so many things that money cannot buy. Our hearts ache in knowing that we won’t be able to see her whenever we want or experience her wonderful smile and hugs, but we know that she is in a better place with the two greatest loves of her life—Jesus and Papa Mac. Grandma Mildred, we will love you forever, like you for always, and as long as we’re living, our grandma you will be. We will always miss you, but we know that your legacy and spirit will live in us and in future generations because we won’t be able to stop sharing your great story.
