by Robyn Heirtzler

As I sat in a chapel staring at my grandmother’s flower-draped casket, I racked my mind for personal recollections of her. I had barely known her before she had her stroke. I could count my memories with her on one hand.

I remembered the stories my mother and aunt would tell as we set my grandmother’s curls and painted her fingernails in the nursing home where we had been resigned to place her. I remembered the mumbled words from the past that my grandmother constantly relived and the occasional sparkle in her eye that spoke of a thousand precious moments in her life.

I found joy in knowing she had gone on to see her beloved husband, but mourned because I had not truly known her.

During the funeral, my uncle read newspaper clippings from old society pages that detailed my grandmother’s gowns and jewelry at the events they hosted as managers of a large dude ranch. He told of her friendship with popular movie stars of the times and her desire to raise her children away from the worldly influences that came with fame.

The chapel was alive with laughter, tears and the joy of a life well spent. And yet, there was no written word to take home. Stories were passed down concerning my grandmother’s life. They were recounted at the funeral, but I never had a copy of her life in print to share with my children.

Years later I decided to put the history of my other grandmother onto paper while she was still alive to share it with me. It was such a beautiful experience and I learned so much about my father’s mother. I laughed and marveled at her experiences and relished the photos I gathered.

At the same time I preserved the memories of my own parents. I recorded stories from their childhoods and put them in a special book of their own. The photos were delightful and the only difficulty I encountered was limiting the photos to the space available in the pages.

It was during this project that my mother handed me an invaluable letter. It was a letter from my grandmother to my mother, detailing her feelings at the time of my mother’s birth.

“I was alone when you made your entrance into the world,” she wrote. “I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before you arrived. So I sent the nurse for something and asked your father to go get the doctor. While they were gone, in the quietness of the labor room, you came to me. So tiny, so red, so sweet. Your cries soon brought your father on the run. By the time he got there the nurse and intern were very busy taking care of us. They tried to keep him out, but you know dad … it would have taken more than that to keep him out.”

That one letter from my grandmother told me more about her personality, her love and her life than anything else ever had. It was reading her experiences in her own words that left me feeling a connection with her that I had never felt before.

It was a connection I wanted to leave for my own children. I tried to capture the words of my paternal grandmother in her history and the words of my own parents in theirs. Now it’s my duty to capture my own words, my own history so one day I can give the same to my children.

Robyn Heirtzler is the author of My Spiritual Trail, the journal of Cateline Fortier. She is a member of the Homestead 2nd Ward, Enoch Stake. Find out more about her books at
www.robynheirtzler.com.