and so she soars on wings like eagles

Today I am trapped in my memory, remembering the woman who inspired me to be myself. After more than 9 decades on earth, my grandmother, my father's mother, finally passed from this world into eternity.

Isaiah 40:31 "those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

My mom always told me that I have my grandma's hands. My grandmother's hands, which by all rights should have been calloused and weathered from years of hard work, were always unimaginably soft. Her hands felt like feathers. She had an insationable green thumb, she grew the most amazing garden and would always let me pick her flowers.

She gave life to everything she touched.

Even when she moved into a small apartment in a retirement building, her balcony was overflowing with life. As an adult, nearly every time I went to visit her I would bring her flowers, we joked that it is payback for all the flowers I picked over the years. God, I miss her.

I spent a lot of time with my grandma growing up. I was parented by a single mother, who never worked less than 2 jobs for most of my childhood to make ends meet. In many ways my grandmother filled the void where my father should have been. In my last blog entry I shared that I was a hideously awkward adolescent. I spent most every Saturday at my grandma's during my junior high years. I don't know how else to describe it other than to say that my grandmother loved me so much that she made it impossible for me not to love myself. She was there for every major event in my childhood, everything from my first broken bone, to my highschool graduation, to my baptism. Losing her feels like I am losing a parent.


I have been estranged from my father, her son, for nearly 15 years, which is almost all of my young life. When I travel home to say one last goodbye to my grandmother I will see my father, my abuser, for the first time since I was a child. I will be strong, will forgive him, and I will close the book on my relationship with my father forever.

From my grandmother I learned to love and be loved, I learned to forgive, I learned grace, she shared with me all that she could and that I am grateful for. My grandma was very ready to go. I am comforted by that. She lived a long, beautiful, difficult life. Her journey came to a natural elipses... and now she soars on wings like eagles.