What should be considered at the end of a life? Your accomplishments? How much

wealth you accumulated? Your stature in society? When I asked my grandmother how she wants to be remembered, she won’t talk about accomplishments or accolades, although she could. Instead, she brought up a handful of concepts - justice, sincerity, patience, health, and most importantly, love. Grand narratives about her life are unimportant to her. What matters to her is her day-to-day actions on those around her. There are people in this world who carry light not by shouting, but by simply walking through life with grace. My grandmother is one of those people.

 

She grew up poor, but obedient, thoughtful, and drawn to the wisdom of books. While

others raced through childhood with noise and rebellion, she turned pages in silence, losing

herself in stories like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Romeo and Juliet, The Stranger, and Hamlet. She

dreamed of a grand future - perhaps a life in law, or in academia as a college professor. Her

excellent grades earned her a scholarship to law school, and her dream drew closer. Her

professors found her quick and intelligent, and went out of their way to help her nurture a future of promise. But then she met her husband and got married, and traded a life that could have been defined by career and job position for a life of raising a family.

 

It couldn’t have been easy not to think of what might have been as she constantly

sacrificed herself for her family, especially with the variable fortunes of her husband’s career.

After one particularly bad business decision, they were forced to sell everything of value and

move to a single room. She said it felt like starting over again, and despair threatened to win.

 

But her Christian values upheld her in difficult times, and the rock of her belief gave her

the strength to be a rock of those around her. She didn’t lash out and blame others, or remind

those around her of what she had given up. She loved her family sacrificially, doing whatever she could to nurture their success, sharing the lessons life had taught her and giving generously to everyone. She was and is a rock that others could always rely on. Her reward was seeing her two little boys grow up to become successful family men. And even though one of her grandsons, myself, lives far away in a different country and does not speak her language, she expresses her love by continuing to give generously, continually sending me big care packages filled with my favorite food, and expensive clothing that she must have sacrificed for to afford.

 

She’ll say she hopes to have lived a worthwhile life. One filled with love. One without

regrets. One that earns her a place in heaven.

 

And to those of us who know her, that’s already true.