On saying goodbye to Gramma

My sweet grandmother, at the amazing age of 93 passed away in early May. Most in my circle know how important she is to me and how spending time with her both as a child and as an adult (and mother) has been so special for me. When I say I want to be her when I grow up, it is the truest words I can probably say. Her warm, welcoming nature combined with a little fire and wit is a combination that won many over but also allowed her to raise a giant family and network of humans that also care for each other deeply.

Once she went into hospice care, family came from all over to be with her….which was her wish. When asked what she wanted to talk about with 20+ family members surrounding her, she weakly pointed to herself and said “me.” (Maybe I got my enneagram 3 genes from her???). We all gathered around, feeling the weight of sadness but got to be entertained by her humor and joyful non-verbal expressions for hours on her last night of lucid-ness.

I have been honored to experience death and it’s sorrowful, yet sacred beauty at multiples times in my life and this time, it was no different. Her life was honored….it ended surrounded by the family and love that she deserved and it made me appreciate the generation of cousins that I was born into. I loved connecting with those that I live further from and planning get-togethers so we can stay connected in the future. Bonded by our upbringing in a family that my grandparents built with love, trust, and doses of values and expectations (that probably wasn’t always valued as positive things by all who received them).

I got to create the tribute slideshow for her which was magical for me….going through years and years of meticulously organized photo albums is my happy place and I was honored to do it. If you’d like to see it, click here (the full thing is 28 minutes but there are some cringey Patti hairstyles toward the end if you’re patient).

Thank you for showering all of us with love and your legacy of kindness and faith Gramma. Hope you’re giggling and getting adored by Grampa up there.

Oodles and oodles of love,
Patti

P.S. This will be the first blog post I don’t publish and email to my sweet Gramma who didn’t want to go through all the trouble of subscribing and looking for it on her own, but also liked an personalized email from me which I appreciated.

5/40 On how you view yourself from the inside out

My grandmother has said some very wise words to me throughout my 39 years on this earth so her quotes may show up more than once here in my 40 moments/lessons list.

Today’s lesson is something she said to me a while back (I don’t even remember the context) but I have thought about it multiple times since she said it and repeat it back to folks often.

She said to me (when I must have been talking about a realization that I was getting older) “you always view yourself from the inside as if you were 21.”

And I find it so true!!! That’s why it’s so shocking when you throw your back out….or the grey hairs show up….or you realize the entire Super Bowl half time show is to make “the older generation” happy.

Oh low rise jeans.

To commemorate these wise words, a few photos from my 21st year without many cares in the world and before I learned a whole lot of hard life lessons (comments such as “you look exactly the same” and “wow I can’t believe that was 20 years ago” strongly encouraged).

On the GIFT of stories

I am a self-proclaimed lover of stories (evidence in my About Me page: Lover of stories – written, photographed, shared, observed, etc.) and I was super excited about keeping a secret all year long working on a project capturing my beloved Grandma’s stories in one little spot. She turned 90 last December and to capture her 90th trip around the sun, we embarked on a week by week journal prompt from the company Storyworth that happened to be blowing up my social media ads around this time last year.

Because of different time commitments, we made it through 26 stories. The most beautiful gift was the time I got to spend with her each week on the phone, catching up on life and hearing about her childhood/past (many stories I had heard before but I still loved hearing them again). I also loved digging through her old pictures and memorabilia to find snippets to add to the book.

The trickiest part? Keeping it a secret!!! Both she and I didn’t tell our families what we were working on which meant sometimes she (or I) had to hear some doubled up tales of life from my mom or other family members. My mom was brought to tears as she opened up the gift and realized what was inside. I know she will treasure this book and the light-hearted tales inside for years to come….

My Grandma, Mom and I reviewing the finished product, sassy photos and all!

I highly recommend this gift for someone in your life or even for YOU if you want to capture your own voice and experiences for future generations – the emailed prompts and questions made it super easy to input text and photos and then did all of the formatting directly on the website. Click here for a little discount code if you’re interested.