My Grandmother's Eulogy

Pardon me if i get a little sentimental or saccharine but what I am about to say is the truth. I will miss my grandmother. Plain and simple, like herself. Granted some people may choose to shine, and burn the skies with explosive emotions, artistic ability or even wealth but my grandmother didn’t. She choose a slightly more delicate and elusive path, she shimmered, she glimmered.

Really, I am not saying she was shy, retiring or even sainted, as she wasn’t. My grandmother loved to gossip on the phone, critique people and dish her highly unique brand of stubborn advice to not just family and friends but on some occasions even strangers. Though just as stubborn and sassy as my grandmother could be, she loved equally as fierce. She devoted herself entirely and selflessly to those same friends, family and even strangers with such an ardor, such an intensity that it often left people blinded and unaware of what she had done.

She was complex, a duality but who isn’t? I remember how my grandmother and I would argue and hiss like cats and within hours we would find ourselves laughing in the kitchen having cupfuls of steaming raspberry tea and giant slices of apple pie with Andy Griffith or MASH playing in the background.

Again, pardon my sentiment, but my entire being is literally filled with glimmering recollections of her and through her I learned exactly what Virginia Woolf meant in saying, “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” As in my grandmother’s life she showed me love, strength and “how to let the water roll my back like a duck” and how to never avoid or run from anything or anyone. In her passing, she taught me how to make peace with my past and look at people for who they really are, shining stars or glittering sparks in the dark, and not what we assumed them to be as my grandma was both. Like you are and I am, a shining star and a glittering spark in the dark but we shine, we shimmer and we illuminate.