This was written for my grandma's memorial service in August of 2007.
Sooo…Granny…where to begin? I think Granny and I were kindred spirits. She just understood me and loved me in a way that was far below the surface. Now this is not to say that we always wanted the same things. I remember once when I talked about going on a mission trip and she exclaimed, “You know what the worst job in the world would be? To be a missionary’s wife!” First of all, I think I can safely say that my career aspirations go beyond being somebody’s wife, and second of all, I’m not sure it would even be all that bad to be a missionary... But that’s beside the point. The point is that Granny would be there for me no matter what I chose. She was an unconditional lover. Sometimes she would give not-so-subtle hints, like a birthday present of a pile of postcards stamped and addressed to her, but she’d forgive me if I forgot to send any of them or just wrote “I love you” on all of them and mailed them a week before I came home. Anytime you’d tell her “I’m sorry, Granny,” you’d hear back, “You’re the sorriest creature I’ve ever met!” It’s basically true.
Now that I think about it, her one gripe with Christianity was always that she didn’t like thinking about herself as a sinner. I don’t think she thought she never did anything wrong – Granny is probably to blame for 95% of my rule-breaking genes – she just didn’t believe in condemning people. In actuality, she was probably more in step with Jesus than most of us on this point. Flaws weren’t important to her; grace was. True, it’s part of a grandmother’s job to tell her granddaughter that she’s beautiful and amazing and the best dancer the world has ever seen…but as far as I can tell, she meant it. She made me feel like a princess all the time. I wear the title GDG – Granny’s Darling Girl – like a crown. I think that’s how Jesus sees me, too, as his darling girl.
Just like Jesus’ crown, sometimes Granny’s crown was hard to wear in public, though. I’ll just name the first embarrassing examples that come to mind, but they’re innumerable…there was the time I walked with her into a very crowded, very tense doctor’s office the day before Christmas Eve, and she broke the silence by picking up a parenting magazine and asking me very loudly and indignantly, “When are YOU going to start having BABIES??!” Another favorite was Christmas Eve (maybe the same year?) when we were visiting a friend’s church, and Granny leaned over to me during the service and said in NOTHING like a whisper, “I’m so glad YOUR DAD still has all his hair,” referencing the poor man sitting in front of us. And you can’t forget the entire weekend of my graduation from Middlebury, where the highlight was perhaps at the Religion Department luncheon. Two of my professors – a nun and a rabbi – almost spit out their food when Granny told the story of how she wished the “Japs had won” because her hangover was so bad after all the V-J day partying. At least the story had a good moral – never, ever, get drunk. Once was enough.
Well, I don’t feel like I’ve touched much on who my Granny was – someone who loved a lot and spread a lot of joy – but she was so much more. One Christmas, I gave each of my family members a “personal Bible verse” that I embroidered haphazardly on little ornaments. Granny’s was Joshua 1:5: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I know that God kept his promise for her – especially in the hardest part of her final battle – and now my prayer is that as we fight all our own present battles and those yet to come, Granny will be standing at the side of the Lord, holding our hands, reminding us that we’re loved in spite of being “sorry creatures,” and never, ever leaving or forsaking us.
