What Grandma Taught Me

Loving peanut butter cookies & people & everything between

Grandma Doris went home last August. She was 91.

I guess heaven needed a new welcome lady.

It’s Mother’s Day week. Mom always reminds me to send a card to both grandmas too. This week it dawned on me that I only got to buy 2 cards.

Life has moved forward since August, with new job and life transitions at every turn. It’s has been busy and hectic and stressful and calm and everything in between. That’s life, you know. Just keeps on happening.

This week I’ve been missing Grandma. I’ve realized I have still been learning from her, even in her absence. Here are some lessons Grandma taught me…

Appreciate the ones you love while you can.

I was home visiting family last July. Normally while I’m home, Grandma finds a way to make the hour-long trip to Fargo to visit on a Sunday afternoon, but she hadn’t been well and on my last night home I still hadn’t seen her yet.

We got a call that night- Grandma was in the hospital. It turned out be relatively minor, but she’d have to stay a few days. I was set for my 12-hour drive home in the morning. “You should really visit your grandma, you know,” my parents reminded. “You never know when you may not get the chance.”

The next morning I grumbled a bit as I drove a whole hour out of my way but arrived to see her smiling and eating some Jello, delighted to see me. I think I forgot that I was visiting her- she was asking all about my job and my life and if I’d met any pretty red-headed girls yet and then she asked if she could pray with me and she held my hand and we prayed before I continued on my way.

That was the last time I ever got to spend talking with Grandma. What an incredibly undeserved but wonderful memory.

Love people.

I was home about a week in August when everything happened. I got to hold Grandma’s hand while she breathed deeply in her comatose state, and I was with Mom when we got the news.

In the days that followed, I spent a lot of time with the folks from Grandma’s church, her neighbors, the ladies in her singles (yes, singles) Bible study. And these were the most interesting people. The church wasn’t the most buttoned-up I’ve ever been to, if you know what I mean. And some of her dearest friends, the ones that kept stopping by and reaching out… if I’m being honest, they’re the people I usually don’t make eye contact with when I’m out.

I was surprised. Here was this 91-year-old conservative God-fearing woman and at the family service there’s a dude in a Harley jacket standing up not once, not twice, but three times to share a tearful story about Grandma. It turns out I shared my grandma with about 100 other people. Probably more. She was everyone’s grandma- everyone who would have her.

These were the sort of people that would get turned away from some of the churches I’ve gone to, or at least ignored. But they were Grandma’s beloved.

Grandma didn’t pick the right people to love. She loved the people God put in her path, the ones around her and with her and right there in front of her.

Live generously. Always give.

Grandma Doris served as church treasurer for over 60 years. Incredible.

Grandma believed in giving. She gave away her money, and she gave away her baked goods (and man, did she bake a lot of good), and she gave away her time. She always believed that none of that stuff was really hers anyway.

Every time I called Grandma, during our ten-minute conversation in which Grandma somehow managed nine minutes of talking, she always made sure to remind me to give.

“Are you giving, Brandon? You should always give. Are you giving to your church? Your grandpa and I have always given, and we have never regretted it for a second. The Lord has always given us enough.”

Grandma’s pastor told us that in all the years she was church treasurer, they’d never been late or short on a single bill. If there wasn’t enough, they never found out. Grandma just took care of it.

Pray without ceasing.

Grandma told me two things in every conversation I had with her these past years. One was to give. The other, always at the end of the call after we’d said our goodbyes, was to remind me: “Your grandpa and I pray for you every night before we go to bed. I want you to remember that.”

I never used to make much of that. But I came to realize that you only say something every single time if it’s really something that matters.

I genuinely think Grandma and Grandpa prayed for me every night. And life is hard, man. Some days I really needed those prayers. Most days. All days.

Grandpa passed away seven years ago in the spring.

Nothing ever changed in Grandma’s reminder. Still every conversation ended: “Your grandpa and I pray for you every night before we go to bed.”

Grandma is with Grandpa again now. I think they’re still praying for me.

Write things down.

As we prepared for the services, my aunt pored over journals she found filled with Grandma’s thoughts. Some entries long, some brief. There were many encouragements. Some had a HA! at the end, something that made her smile.

Grandma also filled oodles and oodles of books with recipes. Grandma baked cookies and cakes and buns, and she made the most amazing meatballs, and she canned pickles and beets and fruits. And she wrote all of it down, and now my sister has binders full of Grandma’s recipes. What a treasure.

Nothing will ever beat Grandma’s homemade peanut butter cookies.

Man, those cookies. I like to think their aroma welcomes people at the pearly gates these days. Grandma was always the welcome lady in her town.

At Christmas my sister and I conspired to use Grandma’s recipe and bake a fresh batch of peanut butter cookies for our family. They were always everyone’s favorite. We never got to it, partly because things were busy and partly because we knew they would never measure up.

At Christmas dinner, we told our family of our best laid plans with a sad smile. Mom got up quietly, went to the freezer, and pulled out a bag of six peanut butter cookies. She’d found them and saved them for us for Christmas.

My older brother laughed, went outside to his car, and brought forth his own bag of peanut butter cookies. He’d saved them to share at Christmas too.

We’ll never eat another cookie like that again. Grandma sure could bake ‘em.

Laugh often.

My most indelible Grandma Doris memory came one Christmas. My aunt and uncle bought her this stuffed parrot, and I’ll never forget it. You’d press a button, it would listen to what you said in the next few seconds and then repeat it back to you, but faster and high pitched, and it would keep going until the room was silent. Someone pressed the button and handed it to her.

“Well what does this thing do?”

“Well what does THIS thing do, what does THIS thing do??”

(with a shocked look) “Why is it talking to me?”

“Why is it TALKing to me, why is it TALKing to me??”

And then Grandma began to laugh, her deep wonderful laugh. And right on cue, the bird started laughing right back at her. And the laugh was so high-pitched and ridiculous that Grandma laughed even louder and harder, and so of course the bird laughed even more obnoxiously.

Honestly we must have had to take the batteries out after we dried all our tears of laughter after 10 or 15 absurd minutes that felt like hours. I think that dang parrot just about killed Grandma that Christmas.

Live a life worth living.

Grandma really lived every day. She made the most of it and she loved people and she laughed and she cared. Grandma lived a life that she gave over to Jesus, and for her, that was a life worth living. It was a life well lived.

That’s been an inspiration to me. That’s a life I want to live.

Death is not to be feared. And it is not the end.

Reading through some of Grandma’s final entries, she knew her health was not holding up well. Those last few months she’d been giving things away, more than ever, and her notes admitted that she knew it would not be long. But there was no shred of fear or hopelessness.

Grandma never feared death, because she knew that it was not the end.

For a couple weeks (two? three? it felt like forever) while Grandma was in her coma, we prayed. We prayed for a miracle- so we could have Grandma back.

Somewhere along the way, even while she slept, Grandma managed to teach us all again and our prayers changed- we prayed that the Lord would come and take her home soon. We’d been selfish, wanting to keep her even in her frail state for just a few more days or weeks. Grandma wouldn’t have wanted to live like that. It was time for her to go home, to be with her Jesus.

Obituaries always say things like “went home” and “died peacefully.”

They always seems like nice euphemisms.

Grandma went home peacefully that day because she was secure in where she was going. I’ll let the words to her favorite song tell her story.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in his blood. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long; this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.

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