Farewell Grandma

My grandmother Retta passed away this morning. This really is a happy thing. She was in her 90s and my grandfather passed away 20 years ago. She missed him terribly and would cry every night in her prayers. She had two children die in their youth and a grown son pass away a few years ago. Her mother died when she was a teenager and she helped raise her five younger siblings. She was relentless in her genealogy and has prepared thousands of names for temple work. She knew her family tree and my grandfathers family tree by heart and could name who descendants were related to and how and where they were buried. She searched for decades to find the missing link in one particular line. I know that there are hundreds of people who were waiting on the other side to give her a hug, and to thank her for being the woman that she was. I have no doubt that she is having a massive reunion with family and friends and meeting all those strangers who she did temple work for.

She lived with my parents for several years so we got to see her frequently in her last few years. She was not an easy woman to live with and she supplied us with many frustrations and little inside jokes ("Can't go there... can't go there...") but it also gave my children a chance to get to know and love her. And it allowed me to really respect her for the righteous woman that she was.

When I was young I never really understood her. She grew up on a farm in Canada. She married and raised her family. They farmed and did what they could to make ends me. To say she was frugal was an understatement. I only saw her ever few years growing up and she was always very practical. Very unlike my other grandmother, who showered us with gifts and treats and Disneyland when we went to visit her. To a nine year old there was no competition.

She bought me my temple dress before I got married. And she always sent the Young Womens statuette to her granddaughters when they turned 12. She didn't have Disneyland and Butterfinger Icecream Pie, but she knew what was important and always wanted to be a part of those parts of our lives.

After I graduated from college I lived with her for several months and really got to know her better. She scared off many a boy who called me (she had trouble hearing and would often shout "SHE'S NOT HERE" into the phone -- I think the guys thought she was mad at them). And she was very worried about the eternal state of my soul when I would have two different male visitors in one weekend. Ha! I would often have trouble sleeping because she would misplace her headphones and sit and watch the news with the TV on full blast so she could hear. She would make sure that when I washed the dishes I used SCALDING hot water (I am guessing that nerves aren't quite as sensitive when you are old???). But she loved to show me the genealogy work she was working on and was thrilled that I could pull up the Internet and search for things on there.

Before I moved from Utah I helped her organize all of her old photos and slides. That was a real treat for me. She had negatives that hadn't be been developed in 60 or 70 years. We printed them off and she told me stories of riding horses bareback and of the first hand crank washing machine that her mother had. They sold it to buy a car to drive down to the United States after her mother passed away. We found the only surviving pictures of her mother and the photo that was taken on her honeymoon with my grandfather. I'm so glad that I got to help her organize and preserve those stories. If I had waited those stories and names would never have been written down.

She is being buried on Wednesday in Utah. I won't be going, but I'm sure it will be a great memorial service. She has eight surviving children and close to a hundred (if not more) grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was a Mother who Knew and I am proud to have known her.