Every morning I wake up and listen to music as I get ready for work. Lately, I listen to the Easter's "Going Away Party" on a CD that one of my close friends gave me a few months ago. Without fail, I think of my "little Gram", and how completely she loved the Lord.
Yesterday marked a year since Gram passed on to heaven. I still remember the morning I woke up, didn't hear her stirring in her room, so I puttered around in the kitchen making her breakfast with bran cereal, yogurt and bananas. I took out the notebook I wrote in everyday to mark her sleep/awake times, and also meals and anything else pertinent to the day. This notebook was a little tattered. I had been writing in it for a few months. After I finished making her breakfast, I opened the notebook, entered her breakfast menu, then jotted "awake at 8 am", after a quick glance at the clock. I hurried into her room to pull up the shades and help her welcome a new day. I realized that she was no longer with us as soon as I opened the door and called her name. I thought to phone her family across the street, but didn't tell her daughter-in-law what I already knew. It just didn't seem right over the phone. As soon as I heard the downstairs door open, I met Naida at the door and shook my head. The rest of the morning was a blur, as was the weekend. I was grieving, yet, so thankful that Gram was with her Savior. I missed her - I saw her everywhere, and that first night without her was so quiet and surreal (as many nights have been since, when memories of her sweetly occupy my mind). I had a 16th birthday "party" to throw for my son, between the day she left us and the day of her funeral. My son, Michael, needed to know that he was not forgotten through it all.
The morning of the funeral, I took care of getting the family ready and made the drive to the funeral. We arrived early for the wake. As I walked through the door, Naida, who had been the first person to stand with me in Gram's bedroom, walked toward me and said, "Elizabeth - look at her!" My feet somehow carried me to where Gram lay, and my heart sent a crashing wave through my body. Tears streaming down, I could only stare at the form in front of me. Lovely, peaceful, radiant and joyous can not even describe what I saw. Gram looked younger and brighter. Many of us marvelled that we had never seen anything like it. I thanked God for giving me one last look at "Gram", in such a state of beauty. It's true, she was lovely, yet she was no longer "there". Gram was transported to Glory, and had no more need of her earthly shell. Somehow, the amazing radiance we viewed then was for us, and us alone. Gram was "home".
The year since she passed has been a whirlwind, yet I still "see" her little form, stooped just a bit, guiding her walker around the corner to greet me in the living room. I stand at the stove, and remember being a young girl, watching Gram heat up leftovers in the old frying pan. I pull out her paring knife to peel an apple, smiling inside when my little one asks for the "peels", as I used to ask Gram.
I remember Gram often talking about all the girls at the Boylston Home whenever anyone asked if she stayed in touch with any of them as adults. She rarely, if ever, mentioned me. One day, licking my wounds, I asked her why she never introduced me as a girl from "The Home", when questioned. Gram's eyes opened wide as she looked at me and said, "I didn't think of it. You're not a girl from The Home - you're "my" girl!"
I hope you will listen to the song in the following post. Gram was a dear wife, sister, mother, grandmother, friend and foster mother. But when it came to Jesus, she was, and still is, "His" girl!
