In Loving Memory...

2 days ago I sat in a chair at the Hamilton General Hospital.  Florescent lights cast a harsh white glow over everything in the room.  I never really liked being in hospitals.  Perhaps it was because I always felt that death was just around the corner or in another room, waiting for the time when it would be allowed to steal a person’s life away.  Its presence was elusive, but always constant.

I saw there looking at the rigid and broken body of my grandmother as she lay there in her bed.  She was a shadow of her former self, stricken with the degeneration time brings to us all.  On this day, death was in the same room, waiting to take my grandma from this world.

Though I was aware of her laying there, my thoughts were not of the present time.  I was in a moment of reminiscence, recalling a time when she was healthy and well…

~~~~~

Having been raised by a single mother who needed to work twice as hard to support two people, my grandma shared the responsibility of raising me.  Even since I was a toddler, she was looking after me while my parents were working during the day.  After my mother and father divorced, she would often look after me when I came home from school.

During those times we would watch the classic movies from her era.  I grew up on movies like “A Night to Remember”, “Great Expectations”, “Robin Hood”, “Ben-Hur”, and many others.  We would also play board games a lot of the times, and I got quite good at the game “Uno” by the end of elementary school.

left to right: Myself, Grandma, Great Aunt Pat

She was also a faithful woman of God and she knew her Bible more than many people I knew growing up.  I’m not sure how many times she had read through the Bible, but I know she participated in the “Read a Bible in a Year” schedule every year up until I was 23 years old.  My grandma was also the one who really taught me all about the Bible and the works of Jesus Christ.  It was through her that I came to have some knowledge of God and though I went through many dark times in my teens, that knowledge lifted me out of the darkness and saved my life. 

My grandma’s faith was simple and she found much satisfaction from it.  Many people in my generation don’t understand what it is like to have a simple faith, especially the people I know from college.  Today, one needs to be able to defend one’s faith using non-religious evidence.  We often need to be certain about what we believe before we are able to believe it.  The faith that doesn’t need justification is lost to us.  At the very least it is deemed irrational and of those that are of poor intellect.

What was beautiful about my Grandma’s faith was that she never needed to have her faith justified.  She was interacting with God on a daily basis and no information from science or philosophy could ever change what she experienced.  She knew God existed because He was active in her life.  That is something that I find both challenging to understand and incredibly beautiful to witness.

As I sat there, I dwelled on who she had been, but I also began seeing her for who she would be.  I saw her as a woman glorified in Christ, running around with a newly resurrected body that would never be broken.  I saw her catching up with her brothers and sister, who had been waiting for her for several years.  I saw her walking with God, being embraced by His love and affection for her.

I saw her, for the first time, as the woman that God has intended for her to be.  And that was more beautiful than anything I had seen in my lifetime…

I was brought out of my ruminations by the time…it was time to leave, and I knew it was the last time I would see her in this world.  I held her hand gently in mine and said, “See ya later grandma.”  Then I walked out of the room with my mom beside me.  2 days later, she passed away…

~~~~~

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust."
Psalm 91