Farewell to my Granny...

The last ten days have been the most difficult I can remember for a very long time, culminating I guess with my Grandma's funeral in Caloundra yesterday. I hope you will see a resurgence in my blogging in the next few weeks as I have a lot on my mind but for now here is the tribute I shared on behalf of all the grandkids at the funeral:

This morning we were trying to help the great grandkids work out what they wanted to say about Grandma today but they were finding it hard. So we asked them some questions to hopefully help: What did they remember about her? What did they love about her? Later when I sat down to write this I was also struggling so I asked myself the same questions & found I still had a problem.

All I could think of were words like “loving”, “caring”, “compassionate”…”nice”! Lovely words I guess, but it all seemed so trite – like the list of clichéd words I might use if I was trying to speak nicely of someone I didn’t really think that much of.

Surely that wasn’t how I felt about my Grandma? Surely I could find some cute stories, or deep insights to really demonstrate that she was genuinely special to me – how would my cousins feel if this was the best I could come up with on their behalf?

Just one year ago my sister Deb & I still had all four of our grandparents – quite an achievement at 35 & 33 years of age – but on Saturday evening just gone Mum rang to tell me that the doctors expected Grandma only had maybe 2 hours. I got in the car in Toowoomba straight away but about 90 minutes later, when I was only half way to the Coast, she was gone. Today, Deb & I have no living grandparents & in less than 12 months I have attended all four of their funerals.

One thing I have discovered is that at funerals everybody is remembered differently – different words of affection, different ways that their lives impacted others, different achievements…and different things that might be avoided because everyone wants to remember the best now that they were gone. But spending time with family this week in preparation for the funeral I have noticed that there has been nothing to avoid – it seems that all the memories that everyone has of Grandma are good, they are ALL special.

I realise now that the words that came to mind about my Grandma are not trite, they are just simple, because she was simple – uncomplicated in how she chose to live. She lived focused on what mattered to her, and that was all of us, the people that God put in her life.

My Grandma loved people with everything she had & everything she was. She was often in the background, she was quiet & unassuming. She was little in stature but she was not little in love – she loved extravagantly at every opportunity, she loved people the way she knew her God loved her. She was “loving”. She was “caring”. She was “compassionate”. The simple truth is: she really WAS “nice”!

I loved her, as I know all of her grandkids did, as everyone here did – she was simply beautiful, soft & cuddly, unconditionally loving. She was the perfect Grandma &, while I know she is happier now that she is with Grandpa & her Jesus forever, for those of us now separated from her for a time she will be terribly missed.