Note: This is the print version for this week's column.
My grandmother, the wonderful Mary Jane Fauls, went to her heavenly home at the age of 86 last week. And I can't seem to believe she's gone.
As the family and I deal with her affairs, I find myself reflecting on what a remarkable woman she was. We are sorting through pictures and packing up her apartment, trying to write a eulogy that somehow encapsulates who she was and what she meant to us.
But how do you measure a life? I want to tell anyone who will listen about her feisty spirit, her poignant insights and her quick-witted one-liners. How do I explain what my grandmother meant to me in just a few minutes? Heck, I'm not sure a few hours would be adequate.
This was a woman who lived through the Great Depression as a child and saw how her parents struggled to put food on the table. She lived through World War II, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights era and the end of a millennium. She married a good man and had three children, but experienced unspeakable tragedy — losing a daughter and her husband to cancer only a year and a half apart.
My grandmother provided a loving, yet disciplined upbringing for her kids and worked for several years as a secretary in downtown Detroit. She wanted to show her two daughters that they had career options when they grew up.
She was the rock for my mother when she braved the world alone as a single parent with a newborn baby, and was my daycare provider as my mother went back to work, struggling to reinvent herself. She provided end-of-life care for her mother, aunt, daughter and husband. Who among us has the emotional fortitude to do that?
As I entered my teens, my grandma never let me stray too far. She called me, wrote me letters, sent cards, and made plans. It was her personal mission to not fail my mother in making sure I was cared for in the most maternal of ways.
How do I explain what that meant to me?
When I got married, grandma started calling about once a month. When I became pregnant, she increased it to at least once a week. She was tickled that she lived to become a great-grandmother and wanted to know everything — how I was feeling, how the baby was sleeping, what types of food was he trying, was he walking or crawling. I am so grateful she was able to meet him, watch him sit up and crawl, then walk and finally, eat cake and ice cream at his first birthday party just four weeks ago.
I can still hear her voice in my head, because she always asked the same question: “So. … How's our boy?”
He's great, grandma. And I have you to thank for so much of that.
Thank you for never letting me forget that I always had people who loved me, even though I didn't always feel it. Thank you for never forgetting a birthday or holiday. Thank you for calling me just because you were thinking about me — that always touched me beyond words. Thank you for worrying about me. Thank you for never letting me get too full of myself. Thank you for every last bit of advice — whether I wanted it or not. Thank you for always thinking of everyone else before yourself. Thank you for never giving up on me, even when I was at my absolute worst. Thank you for always being the force of stability in my life. Thank you for showing me that I have a voice and that it should be heard. And thank you for all the hugs, kisses and sweet sentiments, for I will miss your warm touch the most.
As I sit here, at my computer, I realize I could write five columns on my grandmother and all the maternal lessons I could glean from her experience and wisdom. But in that reflection, I discovered an answer to my own question.
How do I measure her life? I don't have to. I have these wonderful thoughts and memories inside of me forever, and so these principles will be ingrained in my son. Now it will be my life's mission to tell him how awesome his grandmother and great-grandmother were. I will regale him with stories about their lives — their triumphs and tragedies — but most of all I will tell him that the enduring strength of my grandmother helped shape who I am.
The joy of life is the people within it. The cruelty of life is learning to live without them. Life's cruelty tore a hole in my heart 20 years ago, and it just got bigger. But I will go on. My grandmother played a key role in showing me how to cope. "We are survivors," she once told me. And she showed me how to do that through living example.
I will never fully heal from this loss. It will never be okay that I can't call her anymore for advice or ask her a question about my mother or just tell her a funny story about the baby. It will never be okay that she is gone.
But I will go on, for her. I will be the best mother I can be. I will treasure my children and the rest of my family, as she would want me to do. I will try to find a way to make her proud.
And I look forward to the day I will see her and my mother again.
— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
My grandmother, the wonderful Mary Jane Fauls, went to her heavenly home at the age of 86 last week. And I can't seem to believe she's gone.
As the family and I deal with her affairs, I find myself reflecting on what a remarkable woman she was. We are sorting through pictures and packing up her apartment, trying to write a eulogy that somehow encapsulates who she was and what she meant to us.
But how do you measure a life? I want to tell anyone who will listen about her feisty spirit, her poignant insights and her quick-witted one-liners. How do I explain what my grandmother meant to me in just a few minutes? Heck, I'm not sure a few hours would be adequate.
This was a woman who lived through the Great Depression as a child and saw how her parents struggled to put food on the table. She lived through World War II, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights era and the end of a millennium. She married a good man and had three children, but experienced unspeakable tragedy — losing a daughter and her husband to cancer only a year and a half apart.
My grandmother provided a loving, yet disciplined upbringing for her kids and worked for several years as a secretary in downtown Detroit. She wanted to show her two daughters that they had career options when they grew up.
She was the rock for my mother when she braved the world alone as a single parent with a newborn baby, and was my daycare provider as my mother went back to work, struggling to reinvent herself. She provided end-of-life care for her mother, aunt, daughter and husband. Who among us has the emotional fortitude to do that?
As I entered my teens, my grandma never let me stray too far. She called me, wrote me letters, sent cards, and made plans. It was her personal mission to not fail my mother in making sure I was cared for in the most maternal of ways.
How do I explain what that meant to me?
When I got married, grandma started calling about once a month. When I became pregnant, she increased it to at least once a week. She was tickled that she lived to become a great-grandmother and wanted to know everything — how I was feeling, how the baby was sleeping, what types of food was he trying, was he walking or crawling. I am so grateful she was able to meet him, watch him sit up and crawl, then walk and finally, eat cake and ice cream at his first birthday party just four weeks ago.
I can still hear her voice in my head, because she always asked the same question: “So. … How's our boy?”
He's great, grandma. And I have you to thank for so much of that.
Thank you for never letting me forget that I always had people who loved me, even though I didn't always feel it. Thank you for never forgetting a birthday or holiday. Thank you for calling me just because you were thinking about me — that always touched me beyond words. Thank you for worrying about me. Thank you for never letting me get too full of myself. Thank you for every last bit of advice — whether I wanted it or not. Thank you for always thinking of everyone else before yourself. Thank you for never giving up on me, even when I was at my absolute worst. Thank you for always being the force of stability in my life. Thank you for showing me that I have a voice and that it should be heard. And thank you for all the hugs, kisses and sweet sentiments, for I will miss your warm touch the most.
As I sit here, at my computer, I realize I could write five columns on my grandmother and all the maternal lessons I could glean from her experience and wisdom. But in that reflection, I discovered an answer to my own question.
How do I measure her life? I don't have to. I have these wonderful thoughts and memories inside of me forever, and so these principles will be ingrained in my son. Now it will be my life's mission to tell him how awesome his grandmother and great-grandmother were. I will regale him with stories about their lives — their triumphs and tragedies — but most of all I will tell him that the enduring strength of my grandmother helped shape who I am.
The joy of life is the people within it. The cruelty of life is learning to live without them. Life's cruelty tore a hole in my heart 20 years ago, and it just got bigger. But I will go on. My grandmother played a key role in showing me how to cope. "We are survivors," she once told me. And she showed me how to do that through living example.
I will never fully heal from this loss. It will never be okay that I can't call her anymore for advice or ask her a question about my mother or just tell her a funny story about the baby. It will never be okay that she is gone.
But I will go on, for her. I will be the best mother I can be. I will treasure my children and the rest of my family, as she would want me to do. I will try to find a way to make her proud.
And I look forward to the day I will see her and my mother again.
— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
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