Remembering Grandma Grace

My Grandma Grace left us four months ago today. I still miss her like crazy. I miss her coming to visit me and the way she always asked M, "How is Buddy?" whenever she couldn't come over. And I miss her comments on my blog.

Grandma was such a great human--kind and generous, cheerful and helpful, and talented in so many ways. She could sing and dance, knit and water ski--though M says she hadn't done the latter in quite a few years. She played piano and ukulele, and when she was in high school she also played the clarinet. At various times in her life she flew airplanes all over the country and sailed a big sailboat called Night Train. M says she was a great cook, too (especially chicken pot pie!), and that she could underwrite insurance policies. (I have no idea what that last thing means, but it sounds pretty hard.) She could even touch-type.

More than anything, Grandma loved her family. She loved her parents, her sister, her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, all four of her husbands, and her many other relatives, including the in-laws and outlaws.

I thought today would be a good day to post a slideshow that I made from family photos of Grandma. The pictures date from October of 1924, when she was a baby, to September of last year, when she was . . . not. Most are from her own big collection of albums, but some are from M and J and other kinfolk.

One of Grandma's favorite songs was "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," by George Washington Johnson and James Butterfield, so I decided to use it in the slideshow. There are lots of beautiful renditions of it on the internet. The one I picked is known as an instrumental, because it doesn't have the lyrics. (I mostly want people to focus on the photos, so I'm using just the "Butterfield" part of the song.) This version is by a group of musicians called The Trybe, from their CD Riverdance & Other Irish Panpipe Songs.

While I'm giving credit where it's due, I also want to thank my adoptive Sister Bonnie and Aunt Suzie for their help with some tricky photo-editing and software problems.

Finally, a small request: If you enjoy this tribute, please share it with others who might like it, too. Put it on your Facebook page. E-mail it to everyone in your address book (the way M says Grandmas are often prone to do!), or go outside and drag people in off the street to look at it. I want the whole world to know what a special lady we're celebrating.

And now, without further ado, heeeeere's Grandma!

P.S. - For those who prefer to see the bigger YouTube version, here's a link. In either case, if your computer will support it, try the "Full screen" mode, which makes it easier to read the captions that are on a few of the pictures.