When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure...by Tony C

This week, your Kingdom Bloggers are posting about the legacy of a grandparent or even a great, grandparent. I've been picking the themes for each week (with the help of Linda, thanks!), and I have to be honest and admit this one is a little self-center on the timing. I look forward to the stories all week.




My beloved grandmother passed away this week, and I'm honestly having a difficult time being sad about it...

Affectionately know by the Southern appellation of Mamaw, she was 98 years and almost 8 months old (months really matter at both ends of a person's life). Until the very end, she had lived a pretty healthy life and had a sharp mind too. But her body was tired. She had lost a lot of her hearing. Her heart and lungs were just tuckered out.

She passed with three of her four remaining children by her side while one rushed from Florida and was no doubt shortly joined by the one that went Home over 35 years ago after losing a battle with cancer. My sister had stayed with her that last night in the hospital and says she was alert yet very much aware her time to go was drawing near. She loved God for His mercy and grace. She knew Jesus...and today knows what He actually looks like.

I find it hard to be sad about Mamaw Cradic passing after she lived a long, blessed life. My memories are quite fond and drift back to a time when playing ball in her front yard was a weekly (daily in the summer) ritual for my cousins and other neighborhood kids. Some would come from up to a mile away leaving moms that only worried if their child would return with torn or badly stained clothes. A few teeth were also left in her yard from games of tackle football. We didn't need Title IX to make play fair and equal for the girls because they participated in all the games too.

Mamaw Cradic could remember dates and lineages to the very end. I can't help but laugh because that skill has abandoned my generation and beyond as we are bombarded daily with useless and unnecessary information at scales never before known in human history. In her time, weddings mattered. Birth and death dates mattered. Events were measured and marked by the impact they made on families. If only we could recapture that focus today and forsake our narcissistic driven culture of how does that really affect me?

Mamaw Cradic was my last living grandparent. My mom's father passed when she was still but a child. I have faded but loving memories of her mother who past when I was only 5. My dad's father passed the year my oldest daughter was born in 1995. She had the opportunity to spend time recently with Mamaw Cradic. Something teenagers today have gotten away from doing... no... something we all have gotten away from doing. It's not fair to point an accusatory finger at a generation that only follows the lead we've provided for them.

My middle daughter will be hard pressed to remember much about Mamaw Cradic, and the two-year old...well...she will see pictures of herself with her great, grandmother. I will make sure of that fact along with telling all three of them stories about each of their ancestors who have already gone Home. If their legacies die, I will have no one to blame but me.

Spend time with your living loved ones this weekend. Share and listen to stories about your roots.

There's not a better education available anywhere else in the world.