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    "For here we have no lasting city,
but we seek the city which is to come."

~Hebrews 13:14~

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"You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.  He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

~Revelation 3:4-5~

 

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"Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home."

~From, The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis~

 

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"As it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'--but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God."

~1 Corinthians 2:9-10~

 

*Some would assert that these verses do not allude to heaven (see the MacArthur Study Bible, along with this article and this one), but I can't help but disagree.  In trying to find someone who is in agreement with my disagreement, I discovered this commentary by Vincent's Word Studies (scroll waaaaaay down in order to reach it).

 

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~AMAZING GRACE

 

"The Lord bless you and keep you."

~Numbers 6:24~

 

 

 

 

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"We are the age of our heart."

~Guatemalan Proverb~

 

"Through love, through friendship, a heart lives more than one life."

~Anaïs Nin~

 

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This past month, my sweet gramma' Gracie passed away at the age of 97.  She was like a little antique I guess.  A short, sweet, spunky one.  Within a day or two of her passing, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a yellow monarch butterfly fluttering through the sky.  I felt this butterfly represented Gracie, and I thought to myself that she was now flying free.  A day or two later, I went for a walk, and at one point, two yellow monarchs flitted around in front of me.

 

  A few days after that, her obituary was in our local paper...

 

 

 

 

 

After going out to buy the newspaper and flipping to the right section so I could read the obituary, I started to skim through the other sections.  I hadn't thought about what day of the week it was until I turned to a section that runs a devotional on Wednesdays.  Several years back, the paper was delivered to my home every week, and I always enjoyed reading the Wednesday devos, though I rarely get the paper at all now, much less on Wednesdays.  So anyway, I was delighted and pleased to see that Gracie's obituary was run on a Wednesday-paper-devo-day, and when I looked down to read the devo, I couldn't believe my eyes...

 

 

 

What a treat!  I love how God speaks to us and comforts us through symbolism and "coincidence."  Something similar happened when my maternal grandmother passed away in 2007, and it involved a hummingbird.  Perhaps I'll share that story in another post.

 

Over the past 4-5 years I helped Gracie with her grocery shopping.  Though she lived in retirement homes that had dining rooms during that time, she preferred to buy her own food and eat in her apartment because of some stomach ailments and dietary restrictions that she had. When I first started helping her out in this way, she was able to go to the store with me.  We would get some lunch at a cafeteria or McDonald's or Wildflour Pizza and then head over to Harris Teeter.  But, over the past couple of years, Gracie no longer felt like doing her own shopping, due to failing eyesight (macular degeneration) and an assortment of other ailments.  So, I would go over to her apartment, we'd make up her list, she would give me a check, and off I'd go.  Sometimes I'd bring lunch or dinner to her--something homemade or take-out from a restaurant such as Boston Market--and we'd eat together.  My mom and I gave Gracie four Maxine placemats when she first moved out of her home and into a retirement home, and she would always have them on the table by the time I got there with the food.  Gracie definitely loved Maxine ☺.

 

Here is Gracie's last list and check, which I was never able to use because several days after she gave them to me she fell ill and was admitted to the hospital.  I'm just keeping the list in my purse and the check folded in my wallet for now, just like always, though I'll probably put them away for safekeeping soon ☺.

 

 

 

Gracie's bank issued her these huge, bright yellow checks.  They're specially made for people who have poor eyesight.  Nearly every time I checked out at the store, the cashier would look at the check in the most bizarre way.  Then he or she would usually head over to ask the manager if they should accept it.  Too funny!  I always explained to them why the checks were so Alice in Wonderland-like! 

 

 

 

As I looked through the Wednesday paper again, in order to take the photos and do the scans for this blog post, I noticed a couple of other things that made me smile.  First, there was a blurb about zucchini below the paper date that I photographed.  Gracie couldn't eat all types of fruits and veggies, but she liked zucchini; in fact, they were on her last grocery list ☺.

 

 

 

 

There was also an article about grocery shopping ☺.

 

 

 

About a week after Gracie passed away, we celebrated her life at her funeral.  At her graveside service, Gracie's pastor spoke.  Gracie didn't feel well enough to go to church, so a pastor that she met through my dad would come to see her at her apartment.  He spoke about things that she had shared with him during their visits.  Afterward, a lovely musician played his guitar and sang two hymns which Gracie liked.  One of them was "Amazing Grace."  It had been a cloudy, overcast day, but right as he started playing that song, the sun came out.  It stayed out for about 10 seconds, then it went back in, and it didn't come back out for the rest of the day ☼.  As I've heard someone say in regards to occurrences such as this, God was "showing off."  And as author Nancy Kennedy once wrote, "I bet God has a good time being God" ☺.

 

 

 

After the graveside service, we headed over to Jones Chapel at Meredith College for the funeral itself.  Dad decided on that location because Gracie loved organ music, and someone let him kow that there was a huge pipe organ there.  You can see it in the video below...

 

 

 

Here is the funeral program...

 

Both of Gracie's sons' pastors spoke.  One of them related that Gracie trusted in Christ as Savior.  My younger sister and I also spoke.  Here is part of what I included in my remembrance...

 

 

I shared that there are three things that come to mind when I think about Gracie: contentment, kindness, and humor.

 

I began with contentment and shared the following Bible verse, quotation, and poem:

 

"There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world."

~1 Timothy 6:6-7~

 

"The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment."

~Doug Larson~

 

There is a jewel which no Indian mine can buy,

No chemist's art can counterfeit;

It makes men rich in greatest poverty,

Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,

The homely whistle to sweet music's strain;

Seldom it comes--to few from heaven sent--

That 'much in little', 'all in nought,' CONTENT.

~Author Unknown~

 

Next, I shared a bit about how I saw this trait manifested in Gracie's life.  For example, she was always very thrifty, and this was probably in at least part due to her having lived through the Great Depression.  There were other times in her life when money was tight, but I mentioned that people of her generation are sometimes frugal in ways that people of my generation sometimes are not--I suppose my generation is known as having a "more, more, more" mentality.  Anyway, Gracie did this cute thing, whereby, if she got a stain on her clothes that wouldn't come out, she would get out her needle and thread and sew a little button over it.  If one button wasn't big enough to cover the stain, she would cluster two or three together.  So it was a bit amusing to see these little buttons sewn in random places on some of her clothes.  That was Gracie's style--she liked to feel like she used what she had and made the best of it.  I went on to say that Gracie wasn't only content in an economical way; she was also content in that she knew what was important, and simple things like a visit with family or a tasty meal made her very happy. 

 

Next I moved on to kindness, and I shared the following things:

 

"He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

~Micah 6:8~

 

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."

~Author Unknown~

 

"When I was young, I admired clever people.  Now that I am old, I admire kind people."

~Abraham Joshua Heschel~

 

"The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."

~William Wordsworth~

 

I talked about how Gracie was always thoughtful of others--of their time and feelings.  She was very polite to the cashiers at the drugstore and grocery store and tried to make everybody feel acknowledged and special.  One of her trademarks was a full candy dish, which she kept on the table at her home and later at her retirement home apartments.  She liked to feel as if she was giving everyone who came to see her just a little something sweet.  I also talked about her kindness as a mother and grandmother.  For example, when I was a pre-teen, I came down with bronchitis or some other illness, and she wrapped up about two dozen tiny little gifts for me.  Unbeknownst to me, I was supposed to open one a day until I felt better, but I opened them all at once.  She was completely fine with that though ☺.

 

And last but not least, I spoke about Gracie's humorous personality, and I started with these verses and quotes:

 

"A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."

~Proverbs 17:22~

 

"He will fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with happy shouting."

~Job 8:21~

 

"After God created the world, He made man and woman.  Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor."

~Bill Kelly~

 

"Every survival kit should include a sense of humor."

~Author Unknown~

 

"Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one's bottom."

~Taki~

 

"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs."

~Christopher Morley~

 

Gracie was super-silly.  She had learned to turn that frown upside-down and had the ability to bring lightness into a situation with her sense of humor.  She was only about 5 feet tall, but she liked to act all feisty and say, "Watch it Buster," if someone did something to make her mad--though it was all in good fun ☺.  She enjoyed watching the

I Love Lucy show, and slapstick humor was her specialty.  For example, when the two of us would run errands, we'd sometimes sit in the car for quite a while, waiting for other cars to pass so we could turn out.  If the cars kept on coming and coming, keeping us from proceeding, she would exclaim, "Who left the barn door open?!"  Likewise, if we were looking for a parking space and had to keep circling around and around the lot in order to try and find one, she'd say, "Well waltz me 'round again Nelly!"  After sharing these anecdotes with everyone, I segued into how Gracie was an all-around fun person to be with and noted that she was hip for a nonagenarian.  I recalled how one Sunday, not more than a year or so ago, I went over to see her, and a "newfangled" sort of Christian show was on TV.  There was a service that was broadcast that I knew she liked and sometimes watched, but this show was more modern, and I wondered to myself if I should change the channel.  But before I could do so, she piped up and said, "I like it when the younger people are big on God, not just old people." 

 

One day when I went to visit Gracie, she mentioned that she liked the following quote by Albert Camus:

 

"Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.  Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.  Just walk beside me and be my friend."

 

I concluded my address by saying that I felt really blessed that throughout my life and during the past several years of helping her with things, that that's exactly what I got to do with her.

 

This is an old photo of my my mom, dad, younger sister, Gracie, and I on a family vacation.

 

 

 

Here is a pic of my sister, Gracie, and I in 2010. 

*Why is my left eye pretty much closed?  Because I can't seem to keep my eyes open when my picture is taken.  Well, it appears one of them stayed open for this one ;)

 

 

 

Gracie's eyesight was terrible, and for years before she passed away she could no longer do crossword puzzles, which she really enjoyed.  She couldn't even see well enough to watch television, not even on the big-screen set my dad got for her, in hopes that she would be able to see something on it.  And of course she could no longer read, not even large-print books and magazines, and not even with the help of a magnifying glass.  Even though she could no longer read the Guideposts and Reader's Digests magazines that she got in the mail, she kept subscribing to them because she knew I liked to read them. 

 

 

 

Here is a page from my 2012 calendar.  I was not able to do something special for Gracie on Grandparents' Day this year (since she passed away in August), though maybe this post will suffice.  I'm sad that I will no longer need to put a reminder mark on Grandparents' Day on my calendars in the future, though I feel really blessed to have gotten to spend plenty of time with all of my grandparents during their lives ♥.

 

 

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*The first two photos in this post are old pics of Gracie.  In the second one she's with her dad, who was a professional jeweler.

 

*Gracie's funny habit of sewing buttons onto her clothes inspired me to digitally incorporate my vintage button collection into my post; I've really enjoyed it and plan to use more buttons in my blogs in the future--thanks Gracie!! ☺

 

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I'll conclude my Gracie-inspired post with this quotation by a journalist named Neil Hughes, on watching a butterfly...

 

"It just seemed to delight in opening and closing its wings and just being beautiful for that period of time, enjoying the sunshine.  And perhaps there isn't actually any more to life than that."

 

 

 

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