Saying goodbye

It seems like a vast amount of time separates this post from my last one just over a week ago. A lot has happened. Thursday afternoon, my grandmother passed away. The past few days have been a time of mourning, fellowship with family, and remembering an amazing woman.

It has been five days, and I already miss her. The last three and a half weeks before her death were awful, so I'm glad she is finally at peace, but that comforting thought won't make the healing process go quicker or be easier for my family. Since my Grandma Pierce died eight years ago, the sharpness of the pain has dulled, but I still miss her at every milestone I face in my life and every time I sit down to play the piano, which she loved so much. Now, I will miss them both.

I would like to take a moment to write down a couple of my thoughts from the funeral today. First off, this was probably one of the only funerals I've ever been to where all of the glowing, wonderful things that were said about the deceased were actually true. The speakers talked about her embodiment of Proverbs 31, her extreme submissiveness and peacefulness, her love of her family, and, most of all, her reflexion of Christ in her life. And, yes, that is all true. All I could think while sitting in that church building with over one hundred of her decendents was that we had all given grandma a reason or two to not love us so much or disagree with us or feel disappointment in us, but her love never decreased when we screwed up. She sometimes thought my skirts were too short, and I occasionally slipped and said "crap" or "sucks" in front of her, but I haven't a single doubt that she loved me dearly. Two days before she came down with the illness that took her life, she heard that BJ and I were having some money problems, and she immediately wrote a check for a considerable sum of money. Although that check is minuscule compared to everything she gave me in the past twenty-two years, I will never forget that final gift.

On a lighter note, I had a haunting moment this morning where I wondered if perhaps the ghost of Grandma might be present. My grandmother believed in reproducing rapidly (obviously, she had eight kids). In fact, one of the last conversations we ever had was in her hospital room when I assured her BJ and I would have kids and got her approval on a couple name ideas BJ and I had. So when I was getting ready for her funeral this morning, it suddenly hit me that I had forgotten something very important last night. Birth control. My Sunday pill was still there. She would have loved that.