The world lost a wonderful woman Tuesday morning and I just wanted to write a little bit about how much I love and how much I will miss Grandma June.
I guess I should start by explaining for anyone who doesn't know the relationship, she technically isn't my grandma and if you get really technical we aren't even truly related. June's daughter Linda is married to Fred. Fred is my grandma, Miriam's little brother. So Grandma June is my Great Aunt's Mom. Regardless, I grew up down the street from my Aunt Linda and spent a lot of time at her house and therefore a lot of time with Grandma June. And she will always be GRANDMA June to me, related or not.
Grandma June wasn't a big fan of having her picture taken, so I don't have many pictures, but I do have the one above that I took this past Thanksgiving of her and Lyla. I think it does show how much she loved babies and kids and they all always flocked to her.
I feel lucky that I actually got to see her this past Saturday at my cousin Lynnlee's graduation party. She was her normal funny, happy self! She was asking me all about our new house and how many stories it was and if we were all moved in. And she said to me "I told Linda I'm not going to the zoo to see that baby, Katie needs to bring her down to see me!" She just always made me laugh, and I told her, well I brought her down!
I remember when I started dating Gary and Grandma June finally got to meet him. I think she fell in love with him as quickly as I did! She would always tell me, he is so handsome! You better hold on to him! And the two of them loved to talk about Steelers football. Grandma June would get so in to it!
When we had my baby shower when I was pregnant with Lyla one of the games we played was everyone picked a day on the calendar for when they thought I would have the baby and after I had the baby my sister would send a prize to whoever picked that day. Well nobody picked June 3rd, but that just so happen to be Grandma June's birthday so we decided she won by default!
I am going to miss seeing Grandma June at Aunt Linda's house every holiday. I will miss watching her play scrabble. I rarely joined in the games, mainly because they seemed to go on for hours and I usually didn't stay that long! But I loved watching her play! She took it very seriously and was always sure that my cousin Richie was trying to cheat! She would yell at him and make him get out the dictionary and look up words to prove they were real words! It was so funny to watch!
I always made it a point to send Grandma June a Christmas card every year and she always sent us one too. It was the card I always looked forward to the most every year. I'm going to really miss that card this year.
Grandma June was a fantastic lady! I feel so honored that I got to know her as well as I did! She truly LIVED to 89 years old. She was still driving, still knew what was going on, still LIVING and that doesn't happen for a lot of people. I think the fact that we all had her here with us for so long is just going to make us all miss her that much more. But I will always cherish my memories with her and think of her during every Steelers & Scrabble game! Rest in peace Grandma June.
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