Rest In Peace, Dear Grandma

I woke up this morning to one of "those" calls. The kind that causes the thumping in your heart, the intensity while you try to focus on the words you are listening to.

"Grandma passed away peacefully in her sleep this morning. She passed just like I remember her mother passing when I was a teenager."

Dad left me a message. At 94 years old, and in a frail body whose heart was surrounded by fluids that made her breathing labored and painful, she closed her eyes and met Jesus. Just like that. Due to a form of dementia, she had left us years ago.

Dad assured me he was not grief stricken. Sad, yes. But also so happy for her.

As I look around, I experience a surreal feeling about her passing. We live in the house that her and grandpa built over 70 years ago. Coming from West Virginia, they settled here when Grandpa got a job at the train yards. From all the stories I heard growing up, he worked hard, helped anyone who needed it, and loved to tell a corny joke. Because their youngest daughter and I are less than 2 years apart, we became fast friends in our childhood and I spent many happy years as I grew up right here in this house.

When we bought the house 13 years ago, Grandpa had been gone for years and Grandma was still living on her own, but traded the responsibilities of this property for a small house trailer that was more manageable. She eventually moved to a much smaller apartment in town, just big enough to house her treasures until she finally had to be placed in a care facility. With the house, I inherited Grandpa's wonderful collection of books about World War II, along with the memories of him rocking contentedly next to them as he studied, almost as if he were preparing a great speech for thousands who would hang on every word he uttered. He slowly lost his ability to perform mathematical equations, a sad rekoning for a man who had built every inch of his family home with his own design and strong hands. The books sat silently on the shelf as Grandpa wandered aimlessly down the streets of our town, smiling and happy with the travels he took in his mind, until a neighbor would return him safely back to his home. The home that surrounds my family now.

So much of who he was is reflected in the hand sawed wooden floors I walk on, the walls that shelter us, and the barren property that is lush and grown up now all these years later for my children to thrive on just as I did. He was the first family member I had lost, and I was saddened by the death of a great man. I reasoned that his mind had left us several years before, and he was at peace. But grandma was still with us, so I cherished her in a different way now.

She was strong, loving, part of who I have become as a woman. She was my only grandma, since my mothers parents died before I was born. Grandma and I shared a love for writing, taking words and laying them out to express an idea, or recording an event that was important in our worlds. She wrote for the local news paper years ago, sharing her heart about how difficult it was to be the caregiver for an alzheimers patient, but how willingly she did that for her loving husband until his death. The first article I had published in the local paper, she clipped and saved in a folder that I received after she entered the nursing home. She had saved everything I had written, beginning with silly poems in my childhood, to actual articles that I was asked to cover for local events.

She sent me encouraging notes through the years, urging me to continue writing, expressing my thoughts, even if it were just in a journal that no one else would ever see. She believed in the power of words to comfort, heal and sustain us. She poured over the written words in Scripture, balancing her lifestyle with her own 7 children and setting an example for all of us to follow. One time she spent hours with me, as I tape recorded an interview about her first published work, "That Girl from West Virginia". I realized when I heard the recording years later that our conversation was so much more than an interview, and although I covered the article for our local post, the recording rests among my most treasured earthly items because it contained her giggle, her voice and our love for a craft that I had learned to enjoy as much as she had in her prime.

So now she is gone from my life for good. She was trapped in a mind that failed her many years ago, her body eventually giving over to the years it had supported this wonderful woman, her spirit floating above the earth to join her adored Savior, leaving us to put her to rest for eternity. I envision her wearing a colorful scarf at her neck, large earrings adorning her glowing face, perfectly matched to the heavenly garments that gracefully flows around her. She told me several times that a good pair of black slacks was a necessity in a woman's closet, because they always made you look slimmer. Such a beauty, so understated, a classic lady in whatever she wore. She will be beautiful today in Heaven, wearing all white on her perfect body, a splash of color to set off her eyes and smile.

I am, in large, a part of Grandma. Growing up in the home full of love and prayers, cherishing the times I saw her knelt beside her couch on an early saturday morning, her Bible open before her, hands clasped in prayer, beginning her day with appreciation to the God who created her. My security grew as I came back to live in the peaceful home she loved, a treasure in my life, I have become who I am because of my grandma's faithful prayers.

I have missed her for years. But her memory has lingered, and I think she would be proud of who I have become. Her great encouragements are nestled in a worn folder in my office, written in her beautiful penmanship until the later years when her hands grew weaker, a treasure that I will pass on to one of my children some day.

Even more than the precious pieces of paper I have to look at, Grandma's gentle spirit will remain with me forever. Today I mourn her passing, but continue on the path that will eventually lead me to eternity beside her, praising Jesus and holding each other tightly. I can hear her laughing this morning, basking in HIS glory.

Rest in Peace, Mary Thelma Thompson Meador. You are loved.