Grandma

     Grandma’s values and her commitment to family was the key to her happiness. Grandma once wrote she found meaning and beauty in the innocence of her grandchildren who were being raised with a sense of caring, sharing and love. She said her own children were her greatest treasures and she thanked God for them each day. She said they gave her great joy and she felt truly blessed.

     Grandma was the sort of person that made a house a home. She was its emotional heart. My earliest memories include the smell of roast beef wafting through her kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. After dinner, grandma, the aunts and uncles would sit around the dining room table enjoying her homemade chocolate chip cookies over a cup of tea. Meanwhile, the cousins would race to the basement to find costumes in the tickle trunk and practice our show. Once we graduated to the adult table we were invited to eat chocolate gingers and participate in her long philosophical discussions. Those conversations carried on through weekly lunch dates over salmon sandwiches and continued over long distance phone calls to great uncle Johnny in California. Staying at Grandma’s was like a vacation at a bed and breakfast. Fresh towels, a cozy bed with clean sheets and toast with tea in the morning followed by a trip to the hair salon. Sleepovers also included lying in her big bed watching movies with a big bowl of plain chips and a dairy milk chocolate bar.

     Grandma loved to celebrate life. Holidays were a big deal for her. Turkey dinners, beautiful centrepieces and colourful paper hats made it festive. We’d attend the Christmas Eve children’s mass and all the cousins would sleep on her bedroom floor- swearing we could hear reindeer on her roof!

    

     Grandma was a woman very in touch with her feelings. There was little in the way of doubt about grandma. You knew how she felt about things because she told you very explicitly and in a tone of voice that eliminated any doubt.

     Grandma had a great sense of humour and she liked to write down funny stories. She wrote about a 5-year-old Caleigh who put on sun tan lotion she found in my uncle Peter’s room. Grandma told her she shouldn’t use it because the label read “it will make you wild and sexy”. She later found my sister scrubbing it off in the bathroom, almost in tears asking our mother “what does wild mean?”

     Other words which come to mind to describe grandma’s character was her uncompromising integrity and honesty. Life forces us all into positions of compromise and presents challenges to our honesty and our integrity. I observed her rise and meet those challenges with courage and a sense of right and wrong, which was awe inspiring. She will live in my heart forever. I will always be extremely proud to call myself the granddaughter of June Marie Evans.