Gran and Her Reward

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

Ten years ago today, my favorite person in the world left for Heaven.  She would not have said Heaven; she always referred to it as "my reward."  My Gran was the kind of grandmother I think every kid should have. 

She baked the best cookies.  Let us play with matches and candles.  Could peel an apple with a pocket knife and at the end have one single strand of skin, never broken.  She was tough as nails and fiercely independent.  Walked a mile every morning. Never missed an episode of Paul Harvey.  Kept Kit Kats in the fridge.  Cursed when she almost burned the house down.  Let us chauffer her around in a little brown Datsun pickup long before we were allowed to drive.  Hummed Clair de Lune everywhere she went.  She kept the farm going when her husband died at 45 and everyone told her she should sell and move to town with her two teenage boys.  Wore a floppy old hat with big shiny diamond rings.  Had a medicine cabinet with iodine and hydrogen peroxide in case you needed to fix something up before your mom saw.  Watched MASH every afternoon.  Made inappropriate toasts and snuck cigarettes in the bathroom.  Also bribed our sheep hauler to smuggler her said cigarettes into the assisted living home.  She didn't yell at me when my horse pulled the air conditioner out of her window or the time I rolled her stock trailer.  She nearly blew her hand off lighting black cat fireworks in the house and throwing them out the front door.

She was a good person.  A strong woman.  A great rancher.  And the best grandma.  I can only hope that I can live up to the legacy she left; that some of her will show up in some of me.  Oh, and that she'll have a fridge full of Kit Kats waiting for us all one day when we go to our reward.