Me and my Grandma. I have a vague memory of that couch, I think they had it for a LONG time…

From the moment my dad asked me if I wanted to speak at my Grandma’s service I began composing my remarks in my head. As a superb procrastinator however, I didn’t actually type a single word of it until about twenty minutes before we left for the service a few weeks later. While I made a few edits/revisions as I wrote, there was really only one version. Once I completed it, I read it once silently to myself and then once out loud to Lindsey to get her opinion before reading it at the service.

I’ve considered editing it, rewriting it, and even writing something longer about my Grandma and incorporating this into it, but none of those feel right. I know that its not the best thing I’ve ever written, but I think that it needs to stand as it is. As it was when I stood and read it out loud:

I know that everyone probably believes their grandmas are special, but I think my Grandma Dorothy was particularly special. When I started thinking about what I wanted to say today, I couldn’t help but think about the things that she taught me.

The earliest thing I can think of is the piano. I believe the first music lessons I had were from my Grandma teaching me to play the piano. I don’t have much in the way of specific memories of the lessons, but I do still have a music composition book of songs I composed, and I do have memories of her playing the songs that I had written with and for me. Oddly I don’t remember whether they were bad, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t good.

Over the years Grandma Dorothy also taught me to explore and enjoy the world around you, wherever you happen to be. We moved a lot as I was growing up, and at one point we lived in the Washington D.C. area. I have great memories of visiting the amazing museums and monuments, and even taking a tour of the Whitehouse with Grandma when she visited.

In the process of these explorations she also taught me that age is only a number, and that you have as much energy as you decide you have. All the way up to about 10 years ago when I was finishing high school, Grandma Dorothy could routinely run laps around me while we were exploring those museums or while at family camp at Redwood Christian Park.

Maybe a lesson she taught me but that she didn’t learn too well herself is that you should really STOP the car before you try to enjoy or share the exciting things you see. I have a very vivid memory of the ride home from Redwood one year where I was riding up front with her and she was excitedly pointing something out that we were passing. I don’t know what she was pointing out, because she was slowing and drifting a bit towards oncoming traffic because she was SO focused.

But that was my Grandma, every minute of her life was spent LIVING her life, and was spent contributing and being a part of the life of everyone around her.

Which leads me to the most important thing I’ve learned from my Grandma Dorothy.

Despite what our society tells us virtually every minute of every day, its not the physical or material things that matter in this life. What matter are: memories, the people around us, and most importantly eternity. As many of you know and can probably attest to, Grandma Dorothy lived her life almost generous to a fault. Only, it wasn’t a fault, because she knew that all of the material things she had in this world were only tools. And they were tools that didn’t even belong to her. So she used them, appreciated them, but didn’t covet them. And because of her faithfulness, even though, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, she never had a LOT, she always had enough.

While I’m incredibly sad to lose my Grandma, particularly since it means my daughter won’t get to know her, I know that she is now experiencing the glory of God in heaven, and I only hope he has more energy than I ever did so he can keep up with her.