a saint?

You know how some dates just are always with you?

27 years ago......wow, I cannot believe it has been that long........on February 11th, my grandmother passed away at the relatively young age of 66, here at river city's old hospital. I loved all my grandparents and was fortunate to know them all...but there was something special about my dad's mom.

And everyone thought so. And it wasn't unusual to run into people, even today, who knew her from church or the truckstop and comment in almost a hushed tone, "you're grandma....she was a saint." I believe there are people who are somehow larger than life because of the lives they touch. I don't ever remember her saying a cross word to anyone. I only ever remember a smile on her face. I remember her laughter. I remember how she would sing and hum choruses from church. She was a beautiful woman with an inner beauty that immediatly drew people to her.

I think if she were alive today she'd have a hard time with people who professed a faith they clearly didn't put into practice because for her love was the ultimate and constant response to anyone she met, regardless of politics, color or creed.

She worked hard but never had a lot. Her parents lost their farm during the great depression, about the time she married my grandfather. She worked in the munitions warehouse at the Kingsbury Ordinance Plant. She managed to maintain a solid faith in God despite her mother being taken from her early and her brother in WWII. And she prayed and prayed and prayed for all of her children, her grandchildren and great grandchildren, and my grandfather until, after her passing, he turned to faith in God.

I have a few of her things. I have one of her Bibles with her handwriting in it, along with a small notebook laced with her commentaries on scripture from when she taught Sunday School. She has one brother still living in Hammond. A man who at one time killed someone due to drunk driving but no doubt due to her prayers became a minister of a Church of God in that city. I frequently wish that she had been alive so that my wife and kids could have known her.

And often I think of her when I consider how people will remember me.....because I know I just don't stack up, regardless of my accomplishments.