She would have been 95 today!

Today would have been my Grandma's 95 birthday!

She has been hanging out with Jesus for six years now and I had the great privilege to be sitting at her bed side when she drew her last breath and Jesus came to usher her home.

It is quite possibly one of the sweetest moment she and I ever shared together.

I woke with thoughts of her on my mind.

Since today was her birthday she has been on my mind all day. 

I have been pondering on all the things she taught me and all the time I spent with her.

This is my grandma, I don't remember her in this was, young and beautiful. 

She has a look upon her face that says to me that she is thinking about something lovely or remembering a time when something wonderful happened.

This photograph is how I envision my grandmother.

In my childhood memories of her she look like this.

When I think about her and all the things we did together this is the image that comes to mind. This is the face I see flipping fried eggs and peeling peaches. This is the face I remember sitting on the front porch after dinner gently rocking back and forth on the davenport (that's what she called the sofa sized glider on their front porch)

This is the face that used to pull the hams out of the oven, scoop the vanilla ice cream and pour us icy cold seven-up out of green glass bottles. This is the face that used to have our favorite cereal in the cabinets when we would come for a visit, and this is the face that would always have an ample supply of modeling clay and coloring books for us to play with.

In my adult years this is the face I remember.

The soft wrinkled skin, beautiful silver hair and the gnarled finders.

The gnarled fingers that still managed to peel the occasional peach or fry and egg and even though in the last few years the roles of care giving were reversed she was still a fount of information. She would direct our movements in the kitchen from her chair, we would occasionally take a pot over to her for her to inspect just to make sure it was coming out like it was supposed to. Not so much because we did not know what we were doing, but because we knew it would give her the sense of being necessary and included in the process she so loved to do. A process that was so much a part of her life.

She would talk for hours of all the pancake suppers she oversaw at her church, all the meals she delivered to shut ins, all the sofas she re-covered, all the gardens she planted and then harvested, chickens she raised and then chased down and well you get the picture. There was not much that in the 89 years she was on this earth she did not know how to do as far as keeping a family well fed and clothed.

In closing I share this picture, it is possibly my favorite photograph of me and my grandma, it is a very simple picture. She and I are standing on the deck of my old house. What strikes me about this picture, and I noticed it the very first time I looked at it, is the fact that we both are holding our mouths in the very same way.

That is what family is all about!

I just really miss her today!

Blessings

Robin