A tribute to my Gma
My precious Grandma’s faith was made sight yesterday morning after many years of sickness.
What adequate words are there to describe the love you have for a person who has loved you every moment of your whole life, before you were even aware? The only word I can come up with as my vision yet again blurs with tears is *grace*. It is all—every bit of it—grace.
I want to tell you about…
How her house smelled (like oatmeal sugar cookies and mulberry candles),
How her hands felt (the softest),
Her favorite color (burgundy),
The songs she sang to us when we spent the night at her house (Braham’s Lullaby on repeat, Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know, Something About that Name, Victory in Jesus),
The hours we spent going back and forth in her rocking chair or watching Anne of Green Gables (countless)
Her delight in the sounds of her six grandkids thundering through her house (measureless)
The poufy velvet Christmas dresses she would buy for our yearly trip to Branson to the see the Rockettes (itchy, but made me feel like a gosh darn princess)
The notes she and Gpa would leave for each other all over the house (which I thought were “icky” but also gave me a sense I safety I didn’t understand at the time)
How she and Gpa brought me and my sister to countless Lady Bears games (and taught me that women can boo the refs as sincerely as any man)
The joy of a day spent baking in the kitchen (Hello Dollies and sugar cookies and pecan tassies and Oreo balls and her pumpkin pecan roll with cream cheese filling)
Holidays at her house (magical)
Her butterhorn rolls (melt-in-your-mouth)
Her dislike of pickles (strong and abiding)
How she loved to dance with us to the oldies (Elvis and Neil Diamond, and Bing Crosby at Christmas)
The number of family pictures she would make me and my cousins take (which always got a groan from us but I am now forever thankful for)
How God’s love saved her and my Gpa when they were a couple of struggling teenaged parents, and changed the trajectory of our family forever (miraculous)
…but my heart can’t really hold it all right now.
I got to have one last conversation with her via FaceTime on Tuesday. I told her that I loved her, read her the last few verses of Psalm 73, and thanked her for teaching me about Jesus.
She said, “You’re welcome. I so wanted you all to know him.”
I wouldn’t change a thing about that last conversation even if I could, except perhaps that I would be there in person to hold her hand.
When I was 11 or 12, she would pick me up after school to take me to piano lessons. We always had about an hour to kill before we had to be at my piano teacher’s house, so we would share a bag of Gardetto’s and walk around a nearby antique store. We liked to say that we were hunting for something that looked ordinary but was secretly priceless, just like on Antiques Roadshow.
But even at 12 I knew—she was the treasure.
What rich, rich people we are to have been loved by her.
