We Love You Grandma

Last week our family lost a very strong and important person. Our Mother, Wife, Grandmother, aunt, Sister, great grandmother and great friend to many Mary Myers passed away after battling her illness with great courage and strength.

My family and myself made the trip from Florida to Chicago for the services and to join the rest of the family in remembering her. She was an incredible woman. She raised 9 children, helped raise 22 grandchildren and their children.

I remember my grandma Myers for her compassion, strength and her velvet soft sense of caring. Her voice always had such a calming effect on me. She was my mothers mother and I see so much of her in my Mother. She was always there for you, no matter what you came to here with she never turned her family or friends away from a caring ear or helpful wisdom.

It was an extremely stressful week indeed. I have never in my life had a solid week of such extreme points of highs and lows. My cousins Ricky, Tyson, Nick, myself and My brother are all within 6 years in age of each other. We all grew up together, we truly feel like brothers. We found strength in ourselves. We realized that her passing wasn't just something to hang our heads down and mourn for. She would never have wanted that from us. Instead she brought us all together again as she always did to remember what is most important in life. Family. Though we live great distances from each other, as we all arrived at that ever familiar and always unchanged home perched like a childhood dream place on a very snow covered Victoria lane we all felt like we were home. We embraced, cried, hugged, remembered and laughed.

Grandma Myers knew that her large loving family would take her passing very hard. But for us, the older grandchildren, we knew she wanted to get us together to remember who we were and what it was that she enjoyed and loved most about life. She loved her children and husband. When we found ourselves laughing this weekend we never felt bad about it. Grandma always got a great sense of happiness seeing us all playing together. She is who helped make us the men and women we are today. We just felt that crying everyday all day would be such a waste of her spirit. Its amazing that we could in such a time of sadness we could feel her pushing us to laugh and remember that we aren't a family that spent a lot of time dwelling on the lows of life rather we relish in excess the highs.

This week brought to me such a sense of clarity of what life is and should be. We all need to realize that this life is what we make it. If we make our lives miserable they will be just that. If you choose to take the things in your life and make them positive, or take the steps to eliminate what makes you unhappy your life will feel more complete.

Grandma we all love you. We thank you for the countless sacrifices you have made for us and thank you for the things you have taught us to better live our lives. I will never forget you or what you meant to me. Nor will I forget the valuable lesson I learned this past week. That is that life is what you make it. I have always heard that cliche but until this week it never meant much to me.

So as I sit her in this hotel room in Morrow, Atlanta, stranded after our vehicles transmission left us 900 miles from home I feel content. I'm not sure how upset my boss will be when I am able to get back to work, hopefully he will understand. All I can think of now is getting back to my life, my wife and 2 boys who couldn't make the trip with us and beginning a new chapter of my life with the compassion, sensitivity, caring, understanding and positive outlook of life that my grandmother had in my heart.

Thank you Grandma, I will always love you, miss you and thank you for the life lessons you taught me in the past and continue to show me in your passing. Gone but never forgotten:

If you knew my grandmother and would like to extend your sympathies or share your memories please visit Mary Alice Myershere and share with the family.