Grandma Rankin

This past weekend my Grandma Rankin passed away. It's a blessing. She's had Alzheimers for ten years and the past several she has basically been catatonic. Thank you to everyone that's sent me a note or email...they have all been very much appreciated. Grandma Rankin was a dear, wonderful person, and she will be greatly missed.

As my dad and his siblings finish up making funeral arrangements, I began thinking of the eulogy. As Grandma has been in a nursing home for the past ten years in Minnesota, the pastor at our church in our hometown has never met her or knew who she was. I would never be able to make it through giving the eulogy, but if I could, this is what I would say about my Grandma Rankin...

• She wore red polyester shirts with pink polyester pants. And, on Sundays during the summer, she wore white, open-toed sandals...with pantyhose.

• She was a horrible cook. Really, she was. My dad tells the story of her making him tomato soup when he was sick. It was a tomato floating in hot milk. However, she could make good pancakes, and that's what she would make us for supper when we stayed with her. And, we thought that was the neatest thing ever: breakfast food for supper. And, she taught us to put peanut butter on our pancakes.



• She was a career-woman. She both taught elementary school and served as Superintendent during her career. I don't know if this is true...maybe I'm imagining it, but I thought I remember someone telling me once that she would make the students pray in the cafeteria before lunch.



• In her basement, she kept boxes and boxes of old teaching materials and books. She let us go through them and use anything she had when we wanted to play school at her house.



• I probably owe part of my love of reading to her. She taught me to read when I was four years old.



• She could make the smallest objects HUGE games. She had this tiny shell on a shelf, and we'd play the 'hot/cold' game with it for hours.



• She was the oldest of four siblings. She put herself through school by being a nanny. She then paid for the next sibling to go to college, and he the next one, and then the next one...until all four had graduated from college.



• After watching the movie "Annie" she made us mush to eat just like the orphans.



• After getting engaged to Grandpa, she started saving her money for a dining room set. She bought it one chair and piece at a time. My great grandparents bought her the very last piece as a wedding gift to complete the set...the buffet. That is the set that's in my living room.



• She was a woman of great faith and knowledge of the bible. For many years, she taught the 7th grade confirmation class at our church.



• When you walked into her house, she would always greet you with, "Well...how do, how do, how do!"



• She was the type of grandma that cousins on the other side and most of my best friends all called "Grandma Rankin." She was Grandma to all.

Every time I've turned the TV on over the last few days, there's something on about Michael Jackson's death. All those people crying who have never met or known him have driven me crazy. But, now I kind of understand them. They're crying for what used to be...some nostalgia from their childhood...memories of a more carefree time.

Sorry for such a melancholy post, but as my sisters and I talk about Grandma this week, little memories keep popping up, and we all smile and laugh at what we had forgotten about her! I know many of my cousins check the blog and would maybe want to read through the list above too!

Here's my favorite picture of me and Grandma in more recent years.

It's 10:47 pm, and I just received a copy of this picture in my inbox from one of my cousins...yep, pink shirt and red pants. :)