Grandma was one of those people that never had a bad word to say about anybody, no matter how much of a jerk they were. She always exuded kindness, love and acceptance. The first time she met Tyler, she gave him a giant hug, and automatically accepted him into the fold. When I was a little kid, and we would spend a week up at her house, I would bring my pet rats with me. Now, I'm pretty sure Grandma was not a rat person, especially having grown up on a farm, they were a pest species to her. But she would pretend to ooh and aah over them, because she knew they were important to me.
She was pragmatic. She and Grandpa had the greenest thumbs of anybody I've ever met, and when I was a kid, their backyard was a lush wonderland that would put Martha Stewart to shame. She'd send us grandkids into her perfectly manicured garden with clippers, and encourage us to bring back big bouquets to display, even if some of her gorgeous flowers would get mangled by 8-year-olds with gardening tools.
She was compassionate. One summer when I was a teenager, I was taking a walk behind their house, and chased a magpie off from eating a live bat. I wrapped the bat in my jacket, and took it back to her house, where she helped me put together a box to keep in in, and brought me first aid supplies (and heavy work gloves) to tend it's wounds, while grandpa built a bat box in his garage for when we released him. I remember her crying, and genuinely feeling guilty about the one time she accidentally ran over a garter snake with the riding lawnmower. She would help me roll back yards to find the garter snakes in her yard, and always emphasized how they always tried to provide safe places for them to coexist in their yard.
I'm going to miss her like crazy. But there will always be a piece of her in my heart. As much as it hurts to lose her, my life is that much richer for having known her for the past 27 years.
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