To my Amazing Grandma....



This is my Grandma.  Marlene Mae Heilman.  This was taken at our wedding, just 36 days before she passed away.



Dearest Grandma Heilman,

Today marks three years since you entered eternal rest and peace with our Lord in Heaven.  Three years?  It seems like so much longer!  It feels like it's been years since I last saw you (well......way more than three years.......).  Unfortunately, after each passing year, it gets harder and harder to remember little details about you.  Things I don't want to forget.  Things you can't get from looking at a picture.  The sound of your voice has not yet faded from me, thankfully.  I would know that voice anywhere.  And sometiemes, at work, when I am on the phone with an older patient, I will come across someone who's voice sounds like yours and my heart skips a beat.  But then I remember that it's not possible that it's you and I am brought back to the real world.  But I do forget the texture of your hands.  I love hands and yours were leathery and textured and very over-worked.  I remember you had long fingers.  That's where I got my long fingers from.  Good for basketball, you'd say. 

Thanksgiving, especially, is a hard holiday without you.  I loved your cooking and gathering at your house to enjoy a wonderful meal, eating way too much and then watching you, my mom and Auntie fight over who's going to do the dishes.  Someone would always try to sneak in to start doing them, then someone else would follow and argue that they were going to do them, and so on.  But don't worry.  The same thing happens still. 

The night before Thanksgiving, I was making a couple of pies.  I remember how you would always have, like, 15 pies (at least!) for Thanksgiving.  You would make every kind for us to eat at dinner, then send everyone home with their very own whole pumpkin pie.  Yummy.  I loved your pies.  Especially your apple pie!  I decided to make apple pies this year and went up to mom's house to borrow a couple of pie pans.  She gave me one that used to be your mom's pie plate.   Instantly, I thought, "Grandma would like that I used her mom's pie plate.  She'd think that's special." Then, I realized, you wouldn't be there to see that I used it.  Oops.  I forgot.  Sometimes I do that.  Like when I was filling out Christmas cards this year, I accidently started Grandma and Grandpa on Grandpa's card.  oops. 

I wish you were here for Thanksgiving so that my daughters, myself, mom and you could have taken a four generation picture.  Oh, how I would have loved that!  I see other moms who get to take a four generation picture with their daughter, mom and grandma, but I know that I will never have that luxury. 

I wish you were able to meet my daughters.  I know you will someday.  Many people tell me that KaeLee looks just like me when I was that age.  I know you thought I was cute, so I am convinced you would love them at first sight!  I think of how much the girls are missing out in life because they don't know you.  Your apple pie, your candy dish and stash of even more candy, "Grandma's Ham" (which was SO missed this year!)  I know how much you loved babies and I am sure you are sad you couldn't be here to meet them.  But I know you will meet them one day. 

I know they will make new memories with the four grandma's they have and the six great grandma's they still have living, but I just wish I could have shared MY amazing Grandma with them.  I am so glad you got to see me get married, but am I selfish to have wanted you around to see my daughter's be born?  Maybe.  But I don't care.  They deserve to know you.  And they will, through pictures and memories shared........ but it's not the same.  But I am thankful this Thankgiving, that you are no longer in pain and can rest so peacefully and enjoy the presence of the Good Lord.  And soon enough, we will meet again. 

Love you Grandma.