Length: 657 words (2.4 pages)
Rating: Red (FREE)      
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Eulogy for Grandmother


My grandmother was a strong woman. No matter how strained my families? relationship could be at times, I loved her unconditionally. She was the woman who would buy me gallons of ice cream and soda frustrating my mother to no end. Whenever I spent the night she would let me stay up as late as I wanted watching TV. Crossing the street to my grandparents? house was a daily event, which I looked forward to every morning I woke up.

There was the day when my Mom had to many things to do to take me to see the Clydesdale Horses. I was probably 6 or 7 at the time. I had spent the whole day moping around the farm not telling anyone why I was so upset. To cheer me up grandma took me with her to drop off Woodruff, one of the farm hands who lived in town. I lay in the back of her huge station wagon, crying to myself as we past Main Street. Woodruff was hearing impaired, he also lacked the ability to effectively speak. Somehow he communicated to grandmother something was wrong. Needless to say my grandmother dropped Woodruff off and marched me down to Main Street to see those horses. Like a good grandmother should, she spoiled her grandson to no end.

In a way she really shaped who I was to become. Around 12 I wanted to start skateboarding so badly. My mother would not allow it. I secretly saved money to buy a used set up from an older kid in school. My grandmother, although completely against the idea of me doing it, hid my board in her closet every day for weeks until she finally told my mom I was skating. Anyone who knows me realizes that skating pretty much shaped my teen years and even early adulthood. I can?t think about who I am today without thinking of her.

She brought me to the hospital more times then I can count. If it wasn?t asthma it was for some type of stitches. Once she calmly picked me up after phoning to tell her I put an Ax in my leg. She was calm and collective the entire time. She was never judgmental about it, I am sure raising her two sons wasn?t that different. She prodded me about tattoos and being vegetarian, but she always went out of her way to find me something to eat.

She didn?t have an easy life. She spent her whole life working, first on her family?s farm and later with her sons? business. Not too many kids can look back and remember their grandmother knee deep in mud wielding a giant cauliflower knife. She worked harder then any woman I have ever known. She took care of her family, and went beyond the call in raising her two sons. The woman never stopped, having an inexhaustible energy that amazed everyone around her.

She was not someone unfamiliar with tragedy. Losing a Father, Step Father, Mother, Brother, Son and most of all her Husband and best friend. With every tragedy she kept going with that uncompromising energy.

Later in life she was concerned with me not being married, and not coming home enough (which I now realize she was correct). She wasn?t much for small talk, a trait I have gotten from her. She was happy with a quick phone call or visit. She was a no nonsense woman.

When I think of my grandmother I think of the never-ending fields of Zinnias her and my Grandfather use to grow. In memory, looking threw the eyes of a 12 year old; they seemed to go on for acres and acres. When I close my see I see her in the middle of this field with multi colored rubber bands around her wrist, smiling in the afternoon sun. I?d like this to be the way I always remember her.