Rich's Grandma Jane is the embodiment of wisdom and order. When I first spoke to her on the phone after Rich and I got engaged, I could barely understand her thick Texas accent. She can shoot a .22 better than anyone, lived in a tent for a while as a child, and has lived on the farm her husband loves for years and years despite her preference for city life. She read every single book in her high school library, got a college degree, and still devours books on any subject. She has cared for her dying husband for several months almost entirely on her own. She's the one that came to my rescue after I gave birth to Isaac once my mom left and Rich went back to work. I was an emotional wreck and not recovering very well physically, and she swept in and matter-of-factly met my temporal needs and basically ignored my emotional drama, so I got over it. She did the same thing in the dark days surrounding the loss of our baby Samuel. She can diagnose an illness over the phone better than a doctor in person. She tells you how it is, then gets to work to do something about it.
Two weeks ago her husband Dick passed away in their farmhouse in May, TX at 84 years old. Rich got there about 40 minutes before he passed on, finding Grandma alone with Grandpa, needing him. I sent food for them to eat--leftover soup and lunch meat I had in the fridge. Turns out it was just what she was craving (Amy had tipped me off on that one, but I rarely have lunch meat in the fridge and happened to have bought some the week before). When she told me so on the phone yesterday, she said, "It's just all played out like a song," referring to the people and blessings sent her way at the just the right time by the Lord. I quickly scribbled her poetic words on an envelope, wanting to remember the moment. Later in the conversation when I wondered aloud how my kids end up escaping so many sicknesses, she said blunty, "Well, maybe you're just too stupid to notice, Mindy!" She's not delusional or euphoric, she knows what's what and isn't afraid to say it—one of the many things I love about her. So that's why "It's just all played out like a song" sounded so lovely in my ears. Poetic. Inspiring. The expression of a woman who has been touched by—no, embraced by—the love of the Savior.
Will l be singing that song two weeks after Rich dies many years from now? Earlier, about a week before Grandpa's death, she told me on the phone that the Lord had been filling her every need every step of the way in the past few months. She's all alone now on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and she's happy and peaceful and grateful. How does she do it? How did she get to that point or was she always that way? Is it possible for me to develop such faith, stamina, gratitude and pragmatism in the next fifty years of my life? Or am I missing the amazing genetic material she has and can only hope that my kids have some of it?
