Every year on the Fourteenth of February I find myself remembering, not that it is Valentine’s Day here in the states, but my Grandmother Grant. I grew up living next door to her until I went off to college. My Dad grew up in the same house that she grew up in and when I was around five we moved back to the same town and house in Ohio.
February 14 was her birthday. She was born in 1898, 60 years before me. She was and continues to be a very important person in my life. She was a registered nurse and spent her life taking care of other people. This was something she felt was her mission in life. Her love of gardening has been passed on to me and I don’t think there is a day when I am out in the yard pulling weeds that she is not there with me.
When I consider the changes that she experienced in her lifetime I am amazed. She lived through the First World War, the Flue pandemic, World War II, the explosion in technology, the Civil Rights movement, the first moon landing, and I could go on. She passed away in January of 1981. Up until the last tow years of her life she had been strong and healthy, but Cancer caught her and lead her down a difficult path towards the end. I was away at college and really did not comprehend the seriousness of her illness. I was a typical young woman very self absorbed as most of us were at age 21. I realize this now especially as my own daughter is twenty one. I see much of my self in my daughter and can only hope that there is more of my grandmother in me now and that I can reflect all the good things about her to her great granddaughter.
So as the 14th rolls around again I will be keeping this very special woman in my life close, and give thanks that she was and is perhaps the best Valentine I could every have been given.
Grandmother Grant at her retirement party
My family today.
