Grandma's eulogy
Here's the text of the eulogy I gave at Grandma's funeral 4/23/10:
Faith makes things possible, not easy.
Good morning. For those of you who may not know me or recognize me, I am Doris’ first grandchild, Kate Lindsay, daughter of Chris and Tracy. When Grandma found out that she had this last bout of cancer back in December, she and I began a process of conversations and reminiscences that she wanted me to use to help craft this speech today. Without her help, her faith, and her strength in these last four months, standing before you today would be so much harder.
We were blessed to have had time to prepare for this occasion with Grandma. She and I spent time together at Christmas and in February, talking about her life and her family, and I would like to share some of those stories with you.
In Grandma’s life, she knew beauty. Until she could no longer spend hours on her knees in the garden, she always had beautiful flowers growing all over her garden and yard, and surrounding her both inside and outside the house. She knew the names of every flower, wild and tended, and shared that love of flowers and beauty with everyone. Working with her hands in the garden seemed as near to heaven on earth as she would get in this life. Grandma saw beauty in the wildness of nature – she found beauty in the wildlife she would see on trips to the Les Cheneaux Islands with her friends and our Grandpa, beauty in the sand dunes and trees that surrounded our treasured cabin, “The Shack”, in the Upper Peninsula, beauty in the snow of winter, beauty in the lakes and rivers in her home town of Cheboygan, and beauty in the places she traveled to in the United States, in the Caribbean, in Central and South America, and in the South Pacific.
Most importantly, however, Grandma knew beauty in others. Grandma would see past the outward appearances of someone who may not appear to be beautiful to others, and would find the beauty they held on the inside. She saw the beauty in the children of the community who came to her house after school for help with their homework because they may not have had a safe place to go to after school. She saw beauty in the faces of the hungry people she served lunch to at the Lord’s Kitchen for so many years as part of her doing God’s work. She saw beauty inside the hearts of the most troubled people. Grandma’s life was filled with beauty, but she would never claim to be beautiful herself. Her modesty and her love of others inspired her to call herself “plain” – but she was never plain. The warmth and love and generosity she gave of herself made her beautiful. So with Grandma’s life, we learned beauty from her.
In Grandma’s life, she knew service, service to God and service to others. When Grandma was young and unsure what she wanted to do with her life, her sister Eileen convinced her to apply to nursing school. When Grandma became a nurse, World War II needed nurses, and Grandma answered the call to service in the United States Army. She served in the South Pacific, caring for wounded soldiers. When she returned to Cheboygan, one afternoon she was crossing the Lincoln Avenue Bridge, and a young man was walking the opposite direction. Both she and that young man had an orange glow to their skin, a side effect of the anti-malaria medication they took to serve in the South Pacific. Recognizing that orange glow they had in common, they stopped and introduced themselves to one another, and that man was my Grandpa Francis Lindsay.
Grandma knew service all her life – she served God through prayer and by visiting residents of Larson Hall and reading the Bible to them. She served the hungry in the Lord’s Kitchen. She encouraged her children and grandchildren in service as well. Most of her grandchildren were inspired to community service by her example. Grandma taught us all about taking care of those less fortunate than we were – and especially treasured her Christmas gifts from Heifer International in these last many years - purchases of things like goats or pigs or ducks for needy families in other countries.
Grandma taught us to appreciate service and hard work – when we were called on to do chores for Grandma she would stand over us making sure we did everything just so – pointed out every weed in her garden that we had missed, making sure we washed the kitchen floor on our hands and knees and not with a mop, and taught us how to do things right. And because of that hard work and service, she had a beautiful home, and we at least know how to keep beautiful homes of our own.
In Grandma’s life, she knew love. Grandma and Grandpa fell in love after the war after meeting on the bridge in Cheboygan and were married 48 years. While times were not always easy in their marriage, their deeper love for each other kept them through the bad times and the good. Grandma knew the love of motherhood – raising 5 children: Chris, Lee, Brian, David, and Stephen. She was also loved and gave love to so many of her children’s friends – their yard was constantly filled with the neighborhood children who knew that Mrs. Lindsay would take care of them and look after them. Grandma’s kids would occasionally cause trouble – her 4 boys especially were known for that – but Grandma just loved them for it. In February, I spoke to Grandma about love, and she told me that being a mother involves a wonderful feeling of love, but that there is also something so very special about having grandchildren.
I am lucky enough to have had the love and presence of my Grandmother for 30 years now. While I am certain that I may have been one of the most difficult grandchildren to handle, by far, (ask me about that later), she never hesitated to tell me or any of the other grandchildren how much she loved us. Even as her eyesight was failing and her health was deteriorating, she still sent me a birthday card. She wrote, “Thank you for being so special in my life: Grandchildren are indeed a great blessing.” Grandma showed her love as much as she spoke it and wrote it. Grandma forgave us for our sins and misbehaviors, and she loved us through attending our plays, our music performances (even if the music wasn’t her thing!), basketball games, soccer games, graduations, birthday dinners, volleyball games, taking us out to lunch whenever we were home, taking us on trips, sending us cards and writing us letters when we were away from home, and calling us to check us.
Especially though, she loved us by teaching us to pray and by always keeping us in our prayers – loving us even when we weren’t thinking about her and her love.
Grandma gave love to so many – there are so many here and so many who couldn’t be here who loved her as a mother, as an aunt, as a grandmother, as a friend, as a wife. So many people have talked to us these last few months about what a kind and generous woman she was. Even through this last illness, Grandma, instead of feeling bad about herself, would comfort and console her friends and loved ones through their own hardships – her phone would ring off the hook. People have been visiting and calling and writing her by the hundreds in these last four months, thanking her for the 88 years of love she gave them.
In Grandma’s life, she knew humor and fun. In December, we located a journal that I wrote when Grandpa and Grandma took me and my sister Maureen on a weekend road trip to Copper Harbor. I read it to Grandma in February, and she told us one story that I hadn’t written in my journal – that she and Grandpa had gotten into a huge fit of giggles in the hotel room that we stayed in - and Mo and I were mad at them because we thought they were laughing at us. But Grandma laughed so hard just telling the story to me in February – she and Grandpa were always telling jokes and playing tricks on each other, and on their children and grandchildren. April Fool’s Day was a favorite day for Grandma and Grandpa – as children we always tried to outdo them on their pranks, but they almost always got the best of us – even with the simplest trick of putting a rubberband on the water sprayer, so when we would turn the faucet on we would get soaked! Grandma and Grandpa loved to tease, and their children and grandchildren loved to tease them back. Even in Hospice House, Grandma still had a sense of humor. Char Kosanke visited there with my mom, and when my mom was out of the room, Char said, “It’s nice you had all your kids here for Easter.” Grandma responded, “I seem to be seeing a lot of them lately.”
Grandma loved having us come and spend the night or the weekend – and we loved doing that too. Overnights with Grandma meant AppleJacks and popcorn and cranberry juice and lots of card-playing – cribbage or euchre or rummy or go fish. Grandma was a night owl so it also meant we could stay up late and watch movies and play games. She let us have the run of her house – which meant many games of “hot lava” – where we’d have to jump from one piece of furniture to the other without touching the floor, made of hot lava. Grandma would take us to the fair, to the Strawberry Festival, to the circus, to Dairy Queen. We loved having picnics at City Beach with her – Kentucky Fried Chicken and a table cloth. To Grandma, a meal wasn’t a meal without dessert and she baked some of the best desserts. Grandma created fun for all of us. Even family reunions with Grandma’s side of the family were amazing fun – hiking in the Smoky Mountains, white water rafting in the Colorado River, driving through the mountains of northern California. We were blessed to have all these experiences with her.
And at Grandma’s house, we knew magic. My dear friend Amber Wallace spent the night there with us and we all watched “Mary Poppins”, and we all laughed so hard we floated right up to the ceiling. As children, my Dad told us he used to be able to fly inside that house, too. Grandma knew how to make that magic – the rugs in the kitchen became flying carpets, the “back 40” was a jungle hiding wild beasts.
And there was magic at the Shack, our cabin, in the U.P. When I was old enough to help, Grandpa and Grandma would take me there to plant dune grass to keep the dunes from eroding. Many people in this church today have treasured special memories of that place where time didn’t exist – no electricity but for the generator, pumping water from a hand-pump just to appreciate it, walking on the beach, collecting rocks and shells, listening to the loons. Grandma and Grandpa gave us that place and those memories and a magic feeling that can never be erased.
In Grandma’s life, she knew faith. Through the troubles that she endured with Grandpa, she turned to God and found renewed faith and strength in prayer. Her faith got her through breast cancer twice – once in the mid-1970s and once in the 2002. Her faith took her through losing Grandpa 13 years ago, and she was able to continue living independently and continue giving so much back to the community. Her faith was the rock that so many of us have relied on for so long – when we found our faith shaken because of sadness, tragedy, loneliness, depression, anger, loss, or illness, Grandma was there asking us to call on God. She prayed for all of you – most of you may not even know how many prayers she prayed on your behalves. I assure you, that any one of you who is friends with any of our family who has endured any difficulty, Grandma has prayed for you. And she has done so for years.
An example of that: I had a friend nearly 5 years ago whose husband was killed by a drunk driver, and at the time they had a 6 month old daughter. The wife, my friend, cut herself off from all of her friends and family and I didn’t hear from her again. But Grandma, who had never met this friend, was still praying for that friend and her family just as fiercely this year as she did 5 years ago. She always asked about her and reminded me that she was still praying for her. Her faith in God carried her through these last 4 months because she knew that her heaven awaited her. We have all been lifted up by Grandma’s faith, whether we knew it or not. And should we ever doubt in our faith, we know now that Grandma is up in heaven, whispering our needs directly into the ears of Jesus.
In Grandma’s life, she knew a strength that most of us can only strive to have. She was the strong woman who endured marriage to a wonderful man fighting a terrible disease and his own demons. She was the strong mother who held her family together through those hard times. She knew strength even before that, living through the Depression and the War. She had strength when she had to deal with angry nuns at the Catholic school when her boys got into trouble, and she had the strength to chase after Brian and David the day they took off running over the wrong side of Sleeping Bear Dunes! She had strength to spare when I, her eldest granddaughter, had a troubled adolescence. She knew strength in facing and beating breast cancer twice. But she especially knew strength in these last 4 months in facing her own mortality, but also guiding us to help us face her impending mortality. From Grandma, I have learned to face my own disease – every time I have been angry and frustrated and in pain from the illness God gave me, I have turned to Grandma’s strength and faith and example to help me get through. I find comfort knowing that I can still talk to her when I need her because she’s in my heart, as she is in all our hearts.
Finally, in Grandma’s life, she knew family. Whether you were her son or daughter, a grandchild, a cousin, a fifth cousin, a poor child who didn’t have a safe place at home, an exchange student from El Salvador, the Netherlands, Thailand, or Colombia, a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a fellow church member, a beloved pet, or just a friend of any of the above, you were welcome in Grandma’s family. So many people call her family – and she loved every one of you. Grandma made sure the family was together at least once a year – and she made sure we all could attend family reunions. She was the true matriarch of the family and held us all together. Her own siblings were spread all around the country, but she always made sure she checked on all of them, and their children, and their children’s children, and everyone knew they were loved. We can all take comfort and solace in knowing that we were blessed to be counted as her family.
Finding You in Beauty
The rays of light filtered through
The sentinels of trees this morning.
I sat in the garden and contemplated.
The serenity and beauty
Of my feelings and surroundings
Completely captivated me.
I thought of you.
I discovered you tucked away
In the shadows of the trees.
Then, rediscovered you
In the smiles of the flowers
As the sun penetrated their petals
In the rhythm of the leaves
Falling in the garden
In the freedom of the birds
As they fly searching as you do.
I’m very happy to have found you,
Now you will never leave me
For I will always find you in the beauty of life.
Walter Rinder
Faith makes things possible, not easy.
Good morning. For those of you who may not know me or recognize me, I am Doris’ first grandchild, Kate Lindsay, daughter of Chris and Tracy. When Grandma found out that she had this last bout of cancer back in December, she and I began a process of conversations and reminiscences that she wanted me to use to help craft this speech today. Without her help, her faith, and her strength in these last four months, standing before you today would be so much harder.
We were blessed to have had time to prepare for this occasion with Grandma. She and I spent time together at Christmas and in February, talking about her life and her family, and I would like to share some of those stories with you.
In Grandma’s life, she knew beauty. Until she could no longer spend hours on her knees in the garden, she always had beautiful flowers growing all over her garden and yard, and surrounding her both inside and outside the house. She knew the names of every flower, wild and tended, and shared that love of flowers and beauty with everyone. Working with her hands in the garden seemed as near to heaven on earth as she would get in this life. Grandma saw beauty in the wildness of nature – she found beauty in the wildlife she would see on trips to the Les Cheneaux Islands with her friends and our Grandpa, beauty in the sand dunes and trees that surrounded our treasured cabin, “The Shack”, in the Upper Peninsula, beauty in the snow of winter, beauty in the lakes and rivers in her home town of Cheboygan, and beauty in the places she traveled to in the United States, in the Caribbean, in Central and South America, and in the South Pacific.
Most importantly, however, Grandma knew beauty in others. Grandma would see past the outward appearances of someone who may not appear to be beautiful to others, and would find the beauty they held on the inside. She saw the beauty in the children of the community who came to her house after school for help with their homework because they may not have had a safe place to go to after school. She saw beauty in the faces of the hungry people she served lunch to at the Lord’s Kitchen for so many years as part of her doing God’s work. She saw beauty inside the hearts of the most troubled people. Grandma’s life was filled with beauty, but she would never claim to be beautiful herself. Her modesty and her love of others inspired her to call herself “plain” – but she was never plain. The warmth and love and generosity she gave of herself made her beautiful. So with Grandma’s life, we learned beauty from her.
In Grandma’s life, she knew service, service to God and service to others. When Grandma was young and unsure what she wanted to do with her life, her sister Eileen convinced her to apply to nursing school. When Grandma became a nurse, World War II needed nurses, and Grandma answered the call to service in the United States Army. She served in the South Pacific, caring for wounded soldiers. When she returned to Cheboygan, one afternoon she was crossing the Lincoln Avenue Bridge, and a young man was walking the opposite direction. Both she and that young man had an orange glow to their skin, a side effect of the anti-malaria medication they took to serve in the South Pacific. Recognizing that orange glow they had in common, they stopped and introduced themselves to one another, and that man was my Grandpa Francis Lindsay.
Grandma knew service all her life – she served God through prayer and by visiting residents of Larson Hall and reading the Bible to them. She served the hungry in the Lord’s Kitchen. She encouraged her children and grandchildren in service as well. Most of her grandchildren were inspired to community service by her example. Grandma taught us all about taking care of those less fortunate than we were – and especially treasured her Christmas gifts from Heifer International in these last many years - purchases of things like goats or pigs or ducks for needy families in other countries.
Grandma taught us to appreciate service and hard work – when we were called on to do chores for Grandma she would stand over us making sure we did everything just so – pointed out every weed in her garden that we had missed, making sure we washed the kitchen floor on our hands and knees and not with a mop, and taught us how to do things right. And because of that hard work and service, she had a beautiful home, and we at least know how to keep beautiful homes of our own.
In Grandma’s life, she knew love. Grandma and Grandpa fell in love after the war after meeting on the bridge in Cheboygan and were married 48 years. While times were not always easy in their marriage, their deeper love for each other kept them through the bad times and the good. Grandma knew the love of motherhood – raising 5 children: Chris, Lee, Brian, David, and Stephen. She was also loved and gave love to so many of her children’s friends – their yard was constantly filled with the neighborhood children who knew that Mrs. Lindsay would take care of them and look after them. Grandma’s kids would occasionally cause trouble – her 4 boys especially were known for that – but Grandma just loved them for it. In February, I spoke to Grandma about love, and she told me that being a mother involves a wonderful feeling of love, but that there is also something so very special about having grandchildren.
I am lucky enough to have had the love and presence of my Grandmother for 30 years now. While I am certain that I may have been one of the most difficult grandchildren to handle, by far, (ask me about that later), she never hesitated to tell me or any of the other grandchildren how much she loved us. Even as her eyesight was failing and her health was deteriorating, she still sent me a birthday card. She wrote, “Thank you for being so special in my life: Grandchildren are indeed a great blessing.” Grandma showed her love as much as she spoke it and wrote it. Grandma forgave us for our sins and misbehaviors, and she loved us through attending our plays, our music performances (even if the music wasn’t her thing!), basketball games, soccer games, graduations, birthday dinners, volleyball games, taking us out to lunch whenever we were home, taking us on trips, sending us cards and writing us letters when we were away from home, and calling us to check us.
Especially though, she loved us by teaching us to pray and by always keeping us in our prayers – loving us even when we weren’t thinking about her and her love.
Grandma gave love to so many – there are so many here and so many who couldn’t be here who loved her as a mother, as an aunt, as a grandmother, as a friend, as a wife. So many people have talked to us these last few months about what a kind and generous woman she was. Even through this last illness, Grandma, instead of feeling bad about herself, would comfort and console her friends and loved ones through their own hardships – her phone would ring off the hook. People have been visiting and calling and writing her by the hundreds in these last four months, thanking her for the 88 years of love she gave them.
In Grandma’s life, she knew humor and fun. In December, we located a journal that I wrote when Grandpa and Grandma took me and my sister Maureen on a weekend road trip to Copper Harbor. I read it to Grandma in February, and she told us one story that I hadn’t written in my journal – that she and Grandpa had gotten into a huge fit of giggles in the hotel room that we stayed in - and Mo and I were mad at them because we thought they were laughing at us. But Grandma laughed so hard just telling the story to me in February – she and Grandpa were always telling jokes and playing tricks on each other, and on their children and grandchildren. April Fool’s Day was a favorite day for Grandma and Grandpa – as children we always tried to outdo them on their pranks, but they almost always got the best of us – even with the simplest trick of putting a rubberband on the water sprayer, so when we would turn the faucet on we would get soaked! Grandma and Grandpa loved to tease, and their children and grandchildren loved to tease them back. Even in Hospice House, Grandma still had a sense of humor. Char Kosanke visited there with my mom, and when my mom was out of the room, Char said, “It’s nice you had all your kids here for Easter.” Grandma responded, “I seem to be seeing a lot of them lately.”
Grandma loved having us come and spend the night or the weekend – and we loved doing that too. Overnights with Grandma meant AppleJacks and popcorn and cranberry juice and lots of card-playing – cribbage or euchre or rummy or go fish. Grandma was a night owl so it also meant we could stay up late and watch movies and play games. She let us have the run of her house – which meant many games of “hot lava” – where we’d have to jump from one piece of furniture to the other without touching the floor, made of hot lava. Grandma would take us to the fair, to the Strawberry Festival, to the circus, to Dairy Queen. We loved having picnics at City Beach with her – Kentucky Fried Chicken and a table cloth. To Grandma, a meal wasn’t a meal without dessert and she baked some of the best desserts. Grandma created fun for all of us. Even family reunions with Grandma’s side of the family were amazing fun – hiking in the Smoky Mountains, white water rafting in the Colorado River, driving through the mountains of northern California. We were blessed to have all these experiences with her.
And at Grandma’s house, we knew magic. My dear friend Amber Wallace spent the night there with us and we all watched “Mary Poppins”, and we all laughed so hard we floated right up to the ceiling. As children, my Dad told us he used to be able to fly inside that house, too. Grandma knew how to make that magic – the rugs in the kitchen became flying carpets, the “back 40” was a jungle hiding wild beasts.
And there was magic at the Shack, our cabin, in the U.P. When I was old enough to help, Grandpa and Grandma would take me there to plant dune grass to keep the dunes from eroding. Many people in this church today have treasured special memories of that place where time didn’t exist – no electricity but for the generator, pumping water from a hand-pump just to appreciate it, walking on the beach, collecting rocks and shells, listening to the loons. Grandma and Grandpa gave us that place and those memories and a magic feeling that can never be erased.
In Grandma’s life, she knew faith. Through the troubles that she endured with Grandpa, she turned to God and found renewed faith and strength in prayer. Her faith got her through breast cancer twice – once in the mid-1970s and once in the 2002. Her faith took her through losing Grandpa 13 years ago, and she was able to continue living independently and continue giving so much back to the community. Her faith was the rock that so many of us have relied on for so long – when we found our faith shaken because of sadness, tragedy, loneliness, depression, anger, loss, or illness, Grandma was there asking us to call on God. She prayed for all of you – most of you may not even know how many prayers she prayed on your behalves. I assure you, that any one of you who is friends with any of our family who has endured any difficulty, Grandma has prayed for you. And she has done so for years.
An example of that: I had a friend nearly 5 years ago whose husband was killed by a drunk driver, and at the time they had a 6 month old daughter. The wife, my friend, cut herself off from all of her friends and family and I didn’t hear from her again. But Grandma, who had never met this friend, was still praying for that friend and her family just as fiercely this year as she did 5 years ago. She always asked about her and reminded me that she was still praying for her. Her faith in God carried her through these last 4 months because she knew that her heaven awaited her. We have all been lifted up by Grandma’s faith, whether we knew it or not. And should we ever doubt in our faith, we know now that Grandma is up in heaven, whispering our needs directly into the ears of Jesus.
In Grandma’s life, she knew a strength that most of us can only strive to have. She was the strong woman who endured marriage to a wonderful man fighting a terrible disease and his own demons. She was the strong mother who held her family together through those hard times. She knew strength even before that, living through the Depression and the War. She had strength when she had to deal with angry nuns at the Catholic school when her boys got into trouble, and she had the strength to chase after Brian and David the day they took off running over the wrong side of Sleeping Bear Dunes! She had strength to spare when I, her eldest granddaughter, had a troubled adolescence. She knew strength in facing and beating breast cancer twice. But she especially knew strength in these last 4 months in facing her own mortality, but also guiding us to help us face her impending mortality. From Grandma, I have learned to face my own disease – every time I have been angry and frustrated and in pain from the illness God gave me, I have turned to Grandma’s strength and faith and example to help me get through. I find comfort knowing that I can still talk to her when I need her because she’s in my heart, as she is in all our hearts.
Finally, in Grandma’s life, she knew family. Whether you were her son or daughter, a grandchild, a cousin, a fifth cousin, a poor child who didn’t have a safe place at home, an exchange student from El Salvador, the Netherlands, Thailand, or Colombia, a boyfriend or a girlfriend, a fellow church member, a beloved pet, or just a friend of any of the above, you were welcome in Grandma’s family. So many people call her family – and she loved every one of you. Grandma made sure the family was together at least once a year – and she made sure we all could attend family reunions. She was the true matriarch of the family and held us all together. Her own siblings were spread all around the country, but she always made sure she checked on all of them, and their children, and their children’s children, and everyone knew they were loved. We can all take comfort and solace in knowing that we were blessed to be counted as her family.
Finding You in Beauty
The rays of light filtered through
The sentinels of trees this morning.
I sat in the garden and contemplated.
The serenity and beauty
Of my feelings and surroundings
Completely captivated me.
I thought of you.
I discovered you tucked away
In the shadows of the trees.
Then, rediscovered you
In the smiles of the flowers
As the sun penetrated their petals
In the rhythm of the leaves
Falling in the garden
In the freedom of the birds
As they fly searching as you do.
I’m very happy to have found you,
Now you will never leave me
For I will always find you in the beauty of life.
Walter Rinder
posted by Kate @ 9:04 PM
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