Life and Times of a Displaced Jersey Girl: Goodbye to a Great Woman

On Tuesday, October 13, my Grandma "Spring" died. She was 91 years old and died peacefully in her sleep. We all knew this day was coming, but considering the fact that she was fairly healthy for her age, it was still a bit of a shock. Her mind was starting to deteriorate but her body was healthy (or as healthy as it could be for 91 years).

The whole funeral experience was an interesting one. I haven't had to deal with a lot of death in my life, so in general, death is really hard for me. When I was 6, my Great Grandma died, but I barely remember that. When I was a sophomore in college, my Grandpa died, but beyond that, no one close to me has died.

So 2 weeks ago I flew home to New Jersey to say a final goodbye to my Grandma.

It was an odd trip home because it was obviously for a sad reason, but at the same time, I can't even remember when the majority of my family has been together. Most of the family lives in New Jersey, but I have aunts, uncles, cousins and 2nd cousins scattered around in Georgia, Ohio, and Western NJ (which isn't really that far from where I grew up, but for some reason they were never around us much). For various different reasons, it wasn't possible for the whole family to be there, but most of us showed up which was nice. I am the 2nd oldest of 13 cousins (and the oldest is 14 years older than me), so up until recently, all of my cousins still seemed like babies to me. Only a few weeks ago I realized that one of my best friends is actually younger than one of my cousins, and she's married and has a baby. That was sort of a wake up call when it came to my "baby" cousins not being babies anymore. So that fact alone made for some interesting times while I was home. It was the first time I've ever sat around drinking beer with my cousins, and the night before we all went home, we all just stayed up late talking about life. It all sounds like simple, minor things, but they were sort of special moments to me because I've never had the opportunity to be that close with my cousins. Family wise, we were close, but when I'm 8 and the next oldest cousin is 4, that makes for a large age gap. But now at 28 and 24, we've become equals, and I love that.

Before I ramble on and on about my cousins, I'll get back to the funeral. My Grandma was an amazing woman, and I think everyone in my family knew this, but it wasn't until the funeral that we REALLY seemed to understand this. Its sad to me that so much was taken for granted, and that we never had the chance to really appreciate her. From the moment that she had her first child, my Grandma was never alone. Looking back now, she lived her entire life for other people, and it just seems so rare to know a person like that.

Grandma has 6 children. Her oldest 2 sons were drafted and sent to Vietnam. My Uncle Ralph met and married a Vietnamese woman that he met while he was over there. When he married her, she had a 7 year old daughter, who my uncle adopted as his own daughter. However, my uncle decided to make the Army his career, so when he came home from Vietnam for good, he didn't actually come "home". He moved to Hawaii, and my Grandma and Grandpa moved to Hawaii too. She moved there to take care of her new adopted Granddaughter. I'm not clear on all of the details as to what happened next, but I do know that at some point, my Grandparents left Hawaii, and my uncle dropped his new daughter off to live with them. Uncle Ralph may have adopted my cousin, but he never raised her. My Grandparents did. Grandma welcomed her into the family as a 7th child, and to this day, Julie refers to my aunts and uncles by their first names, not as "aunt" and "uncle" because she was raised with them as a sibling. Julie ended up living with my grandparents until she was 35, which is when she finally moved out and got married.

Within just a few weeks of each other, my cousin prepared to move out, as my aunt prepared to move in. I don't remember the exact time frame, but it was close - probably about 3 weeks. My Aunt ran from an abusive husband in Texas, drove through the night and ended up in New Jersey with 3 kids and no place to go. So 3 weeks before Julie moved out, my Aunt Bridget moved in. Aunt Bridget still lives in the house today. So couple this with the fact that my Grandma not only moved to Hawaii for several months, but she also moved to Texas when my cousin Colton was born, Georgia when my cousins Garrett and Brian were born, and she babysat me and 5 of my other cousins - every day for years, when did this lady have any time to herself? The short answer is that she didn't. But she never complained. She smiled every day! She took care of me and all of my cousins when we were sick. She came to every graduation, dance recital, soccer game, etc that she could. She did everything for her own children when they were growing up, and then she did everything for her grandchildren. She even made sure to never forget one grandchild. When I was 2 my Aunt had a baby girl, Caitlin, who didn't live past the day she was born. There may be 13 living cousins, but if you asked my Grandma she would always say that she had 14 grandchildren. She always made sure, that noone ever forgot about Caitlin. My cousin Julie now has 2 children of her own, which means that Grandma had become a great-grandma. Even in her last years, she lived for those 2 kids. I think the reality of that hit me when I saw my cousin's 6 year old daughter crying her eyes out at the funeral. That really hit me hard because when I was 6, I don't remember much about my great-grandmother. I vaguely remember her dying, but I know that I didn't cry at her funeral, or even care that much. Basically, I just didn't know her and as a 6 year old, I had no reason to be upset and I really didn't understand what was going on. But Jocelyn understood that she was losing her great-grandmother and that fact alone made me realize just how involved my grandma was in all of our lives. If she had the ability to touch a 6 year old like that, especially since the last 6 years of her life were spent slowly getting alzheimer's, then she must have been an amazing woman.

The priest at her funeral told us that God rewarded my grandma with a peaceful death. He said something along the lines of "Her life was spent doing nothing for herself and everything for others, and God rewarded her by making her last moments simple and peaceful". I think that was the point when I really started crying. Grandma did deserve to be rewarded, and I think that all of us wish that we had appreciated her more when she was alive. It makes me sad to think that she might not know how much we all loved her, but I hope that she does know.

One testament to the fact that she was so loved and so appreciated was the response that my aunt got for her viewing. My aunt wanted to make a picture collage so she asked everyone to contribute pictures. The response she got was so overwhelming that instead of one picture collage, we ended up with close to 20. When my aunt realized we all had tons of pictures, she asked us all to create our own collages. I had a lot of fun going through all of my old photo albums to find pictures, so I thought I'd post the ones I ended up using for my collage. Sadly, I don't have many pictures at all from the last years of her life, and I wish I did. I wish I had been around more, but knowing that it wouldn't have mattered does make me feel good. I know my Grandma loved us all, but I don't think she ever had a chance to really miss us all since there were always so many people around and so many people to take care of! She truly was a remarkable woman.

I know that I will always miss her, but now Grandma is with my Grandpa, her husband, who died 9 years before her, also peacefully in his sleep. She's also finally with Caitlin, the granddaughter she never got to know. It makes me happy to know that, especially after going through her stuff after the funeral. Someone had gone through all of her photo albums and distrubted pictures to everyone. In a pile of pictures that my dad ended up with, I found a picture of all 13 grandchildren. Its actually the only picture that exists of all 13 of us and it was taken about 12 years ago. On the back of the picture Grandma had labeled it with all of our names, and at the top of that she had drawn a small angel and wrote "Caitlin" next to it. I always knew that she never excluded Caitlin from anything, but seeing that on the back of the picture made me cry. Its the only picture of all of her grandkids, and she even made sure that Caitlin was included in that picture. Now she can finally be with Caitlin :-).

Feel free to laugh at my middle school awkwardness and my general growing up awkwardness from these pictures. I just wanted to post them because they were my favorite pictures out of all the ones I had and these are what my collage was made up of.