Gma

My precious grandma left this earth on Sunday, August 28, 2005. Her name was Ellen, but everyone called her Trudy. I was blessed to call her Grandma.

I went to Portland, Oregon to be with my dad's family for her funeral. We all gathered to share our pain, and to show our love and unity as a family celebrating her life.

The last time I saw her she didn't even know who I was. I had never felt that kind of sadness before. It tore my heart and I cried my eyes out that night. Alzheimer's is a cruel disease.
But then on the day when we gathered together to say goodbye one final time I couldn't even picture in my mind the way she had been toward the end of her life. A hundred mental pictures I have of her from throughout my life came rushing back, stumbling over each other until they were just a blur of smiles and laughter. She was joy. She was comfort. She loved like it was breathing.

We stood under that small cemetery shelter on a beautiful Thursday morning and I struggled with my emotions and my comprehension of what I was experiencing. The moment suddenly became very real to me. From where I was standing on the side I looked around at the people she had loved so dearly. My heart broke then and I cried for my grandma's sisters, for her children, and for her husband who was saying goodbye to the love of his life. Then I cried for myself.

The air was thick with a strange mixture of pain and love. Our hearts silently joined one another's in our sadness. Our individual memories collided with each other's; the memories of joy and laughter and her famous blueberry coffeecake. We were family and she spent a lifetime cherishing every one of us.

Funerals are strange things. There's all the external formality and compulsory composure and script for the ceremony, and then there's the swirling thoughts and emotions flying wildly around inside you. It almost made me dizzy - the contrast.
At a funeral, a person might really just want to curl up in a ball on the ground and cry, or they might want to lean on the casket and put their arms around it as though they were giving the person one last hug, or they might want to dance and sing and praise God, knowing that their loved one is with Him for eternity. But people usually just stand there, silent or crying softly, absorbed in their thoughts.

I wanted to curl up in my grandpa's lap like a child, and cry with him and for him. How does a man say goodbye to the woman he has cherished every day for 56 years?

She was a beautiful, beautiful woman.

I am so thankful I was able to be there for her funeral because it felt so good to be able to say goodbye while I was with family, not just from a corner of my room 3,000 miles away. It was so good to be able to hold my grandpa's hand. A stroke he had a number of years back made it hard to understand him when he speaks, but the firm squeeze he gave me as I held his hand said a lot. It said he loved me. It said his heart was hurting like it never had before. It said he was glad I was there. It said he was thankful for such a loving family. It said he was afraid of the lonely nights ahead, but that he was glad his wife was singing to God with the choir of angels.

God blessed us all with her life.