An Amazing Soul

Once when I was little there was this lonely old lady who was best friends with my grandma back when we lived in Iowa, and she called asking to speak with my mom. I didn’t hang up the phone after my mom picked it up from upstairs because I enjoyed hearing people talk about my grandma. I wanted to eavesdrop. My grandma had been sick for years and was only a shell of her former vibrant self in a nursing home, so all I really had were stories.

“She just came out of nowhere one day,” the lady quietly said over the phone to my mom, “with seven children and no money, but she had such an upbeat attitude. I’ve never met anyone who smiled so much with so little to smile about. She just wanted to love people and she wanted people to love her. And she was so smart, too. I ever tell you that only weeks into moving to America she was already speaking fluent English and driving a car? That just doesn’t happen. Your mother was truly an amazing soul, and there isn’t a night that passes by that I don’t think of her.”

People always huddle together to share stories about my grandma, but for some reason it’s this particular phone conversation between that lady and my mom that I seem to think about the most when it comes to her.

Five years ago today my grandma passed away. She continues to be an inspiration for me and my family.