One Last Thing

     I understand I should not be surprised. She was blessed with a long life. There are not many people that live to be 99 years old. But she is my grandma and I will miss her dearly.
     It is still a shock to me. I suppose I had just assumed she was a shoo in for 100. Happily, we had just celebrated her birthday with her less then two weeks ago. She had cake and ice cream. She ate every bit. She always loved her desserts. I inherited that from her.
     I also get my love of baking and reading from her. I use her sugar cookie recipe to this day and have shared it with hundreds of other people. It was part of the give away that we sent home with each guest at our wedding as our thank you-a heart cookie cutter and grandma's recipe, along with the phrase,"We are cut out for each other."
     I am off of my day job this week. I hoped to get a lot of writing done. I have gotten some done. In fact, I may have written one of the most important pieces of my life. If you had told me a week ago that I would be writing this, I would not have believed it. Yesterday I wrote up my grandma's obituary for our little local paper. My mom asked me to do this. It was hard to know what to say. There is so much I wanted to say, but I managed to come up with what I believe are just the right phrases to sum up grandma's 99 years, at least from my perspective. I hope it did her justice and honored her.
     I know I will be writing more about her in the coming months so that I can save her memories in my words, in my heart, and in my mind. One of the greatest gifts she gave me as a child was just simply allowing me to be me. There was never any time pressure at grandma's. We could play outside at our leisure, walk to the park or the playground, or walk down-town with her to the dime store, library, or local restaurant.
   I am glad that I had the opportunity to do this one last thing for her.