of two minds to see you go

My amazing Grandma died this morning.  Our family had actually been praying for this for some months now, since she suffered another major stroke in June.  All that to say, we knew it was coming, so the sadness is somewhat lessened.  I wrote a tribute for her funeral this coming weekend.  Here it is.

Florence Mary N-H.  Daughter.  Sister.  Niece.  Cousin.  Friend.  Wife.  Mother.  Grandmother.  Great-Grandmother.  She was all of these, and more, to all of us during the course of her incandescent life.   And now, we are here to celebrate, as she celebrates too, in heaven.

 

I will miss her terribly, as we all will, but it gives me great comfort in my grief to know that she left this life for the kind of homecoming that started with, “Well done, good and faithful servant…”

Well done, Grandma, for giving love, rich and persevering and deep.  For a life well-loved is a life well-lived.  There is one thing that was always clear in the domain you had charge over:  Love lives here.  And when you come, be you family or friend, there is love enough to go around.   And around and around.

   

Well done, Grandma, for laughing.  For laughter is the best medicine and your medicine was often just what the moment needed.  In the giggles, you reminded us to enjoy life in all its simple ways.  I will surely miss this the most:  finding ways to get you to collapse into fits of unstoppable laughter.

    

Well done, Grandma, for forgiving.  Perhaps the most important lesson in life is this, and you paved the way for all of us.  You forgave as you have been forgiven.   This is no small thing.  And though it is the hardest lesson to learn, you stayed on the path.  Because of you, that path is all the more clear for us.

   

Well done, Grandma, for teaching the value in working hard and praying harder.  You had the faith of generations that are and generations that are to come, to comfort you as you finished your own good fight of faith. You were your most luminous in this.

Well done, Grandma, for faithfully training your progeny that for every dirty dish we have to wash, we can be thankful we have full bellies with which to thank the Lord.  “For there are little children living far away in a country called Ethiopia who go to sleep tonight only wishing they had a few dirty dishes to wash.”  Well done planting the seeds of gratefulness in your brood, that one day sprouted into a life (two lives, actually) you could never have imagined. 

Well done, Grandma, for suffering and holding on to Jesus in spite of hardship and anguish.  For a life lived in the shadow of the Son will see the fullness of pain.  But you left it all in God’s pocket to spend as He chose.  I have never found you more beautiful than seeing you endure suffering’s most wrenching lessons, all of which you bore out in humility.

 

Well done, Grandma, for your tenacity.  You were a stubborn one;  I think we could all agree!  Good thing too…your life and your family have needed fierce and unwavering devotion at times.  We couldn’t have had the one without the other.  So in the end, I’m glad we could never talk you out of much.

 

Well done, Grandma, for your kind-hearted peacemaking.  It is said the peacemakers will be called the children of God.  And indeed you are.  You have left a standard for us to bear.  May we work as you did, tirelessly, and even unto old age, to bring about the Kingdom of God. 

  

So, so well done, Grandma, and therefore, I will miss you.  I will miss getting your hugs, hearing your soft voice telling me you love me and then burying my nose in the crook of your neck.  There I always found the goodness of God in a Grandma full of Him.