My Grandma, the Butterfly

This is what I'll be reading at Grandma's service today. I am not a public speaker, so I'll be summoning her strength to get through it. I'll do my best. She'll probably give me some business one day about saying the word G-String at her funeral, but the people need to know all the parts we knew. That's the only way to remember her.

I was thinking about Grandma this week and how much she loved butterflies and always wore her butterfly pin when she got all dressed up for our special occasions and so I decided to Google butterflies just to look them up to find out what exactly they had in common together except for the obvious commonlity which was their beauty, which they undoubtedly share together.

I found this quote:

"Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine." ~Jeffrey Glassberg


Grandma led us to sunshine, every moment we spent with her.

You see, my sister and I had a very special relationship with Grandma. We'd joke around and laugh together like little kids, we had inside jokes, we made fun of each other, and I'll most definitely never forget the time Grandma said the word, "G string." That was both hysterical and weird but mostly hysterical.

I don't have many family memories without Grandma in it. She was there when we were children, she was there for our graduation, holidays, our weddings and she was there to hold our babies.

Grandma played the Wii and she won a Wii bowling tournament and the Wii is not very old so you know she was in her 90's when she won it. We have pictures of her bowling a Wii strike. She would give us a hard time when we messed up. She was competitive like that.

The first time Aidan ever said "I love you," it was not to me; it was to her. We were out to lunch one afternoon and as I was dropping her off, she said, "I love you," to us and he said, "I YOU!" right back as if he's always been saying it. She was very special to him, even as a baby.

Like the quote called a butterfly, "beautiful and graceful" I would certainly call Grandma beautiful and graceful, always perfectly put together and polished with everything in place from her hair to her jewelry and the buttefly pin perfectly placed on her collar.

She was always so beautiful. And yes, like a butterfly, small and approachable.

And like a butterfly, she looked delicate but her story told something quite different. Grandma was anything but a delicate butterfly, in fact if I could give her an Indian name it would be "Strong like OX" because she most certainly was. As a matriarch, a mother, a sister, an aunt, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother, her mind and will and wit was just as sharp as her body for every single year of her 95 years. 

We would laugh when she'd complain about being among all the "old people" where she lived when she was quite possibly the oldest one there.

Grandma may have been 95, but she wasn't old. Not for a single day of it.

I know I'm supposed to think about what a long and wonderful life she led, but honestly, it's because she was here with us for so long that that's why it's so hard to let her go.

I will always think of her when I see a butterfly floating by, flitting from flower to flower and stopping for a few seconds to bask in the beautiful sunshine.

Like the quote says, everyone deserves a little sunshine.
Grandma was ours.