Sadly, it has been a while since I have been able to pull together a blog posting. I know this disappoints Cyndi (my imaginary stalker) and a few of my loyal relatives (that actually read my blog). It has been a tough past three weeks for me. My grandmother Ruth passed away on April 2 after a fall in which she hit her head and had bleeding on the brain. She was 91 years old and lived a very full life. Yet, I still had a hard time with her death. The last grandparent I had died was my Grandfather Dieter and I believe that was roughly 16-17 years ago.

I haven’t had to deal with a lot of death in my family for the past few years. My wife had her grandmother died a few years ago. However, my Grandma Ruth’s death was particular hard for me due to how much of a wonderful lady she was. She was the matriarch of our family (on my mother’s side) and she helped a lot of her children and grandchildren out over the years.

I enjoyed her company and have good memories of her that I’ll be able to live with for the rest of my life. I felt relived that I was able to say good bye to her before she passed away. I’ll miss her but I’m glad she was around for so long. I was definitely lucky to be the oldest grandchild and have the chance to enjoy my Grandma the longest (over my other cousins).

This isn’t to say that I was jealous of my younger cousins since they had the opportunity to live with her. Granted it wasn’t the best for them to be able to live with her because she was more of a parent than a grandparent. I got a good chuckle out of them talking about her discipline (which I luckily missed!). They were able to spend more time with her than I was since they lived in the same house as she did. When I was younger, I thought how cool it would be to live with your grandparents versus your mean old strict parents. After a few of my cousins’ stories I now know that isn’t true.

In the last years of her life, she had Alzheimer’s and really didn’t remember much of what was happening day to day. She would fake it a lot when she saw you. She always greeted you with a warm welcome and would tell you it had been a long time since she had seen you last (even if you had seen her the day before). She might not remember you at that particular moment but she sure did make you feel important. It was always good to visit her.

I suspect that even if you were the biggest loser in life, Grandma Ruth would still make you feel great. She would pay attention to whatever you told her whether it was about the turkey sandwich you just ate, your kid’s failed math test, or the time you dropped a dozen eggs on her floor when you were ten years old.

I’ll miss her but I’m glad I was able to have a wonderful lady like her in my life.