Don’t Forget Grandma

May 2009 Issue

By Lin Vernon Floyd
What memories do you have of your grandma? I remember mine taking hot steaming loaves of homemade bread from her wood stove and turning them upside down to cool on the kitchen table nearby. The inviting aroma filled her small kitchen. Only a few minutes later, I’d be asked if I wanted a warm slice of bread dripping with melted butter served with homemade preserves.

Is your grandmother still around or is she gone and forgotten? I spent lots of time with both of mine, but I never knew my great grandmothers as they died before my birth. I suppose you could say…nothing can be done about that, but that’s not true.

From talking with my grandmothers I learned more about their mothers. All it takes to preserve those memories is for me to write down their histories and take the opportunity to tell my family about these special matriarchs who left a legacy for all our lives.

I remember my Grandma Johnson who was born in Eureka, Utah in 1890. She had a great influence on my life. Short and plump, full of energy and hugs for all her eight grandchildren, we loved to visit her.
When my mom was widowed in 1945, moving in with grandma seemed like a natural thing to do. I got the best of both worlds when she became my babysitter while my mom worked. We lived upstairs in grandma’s boarding house for several years in a small apartment with a wood stove until we moved to California.

While babysitting me, Grandma would recount fascinating stories about her courtship with Grandpa and her life in old Silver City, a bustling mining town in Utah now abandoned. She recalled how her mom (my great grandmother) was a midwife and had helped deliver many babies at home. Grandma’s dad was a miner who unfortunately died young, leaving a widow with ten dependent children. That made three generations in a row of young widows in my immediate family. Listening to my grandma talk about her parents introduced me to my great grandparents that I never knew.

Years later when I returned to Utah for college, I sat down with grandma again and wrote down these stories that she had told me when I was younger. Compiling a story of her life complete with photos, I wanted to preserve her memory for my future children and grandchildren who will never know her in this life.

After I married, I was able to take a four generation photo of grandma, my mom, myself and my new baby boy. I didn’t want this special person to be forgotten. I wanted her posterity to know of her contributions to my life. If I don’t write her story-who will?

When we celebrate Mother’s Day every year as a family, I tell my grandchildren about my experiences with my grandmother, and my mother who they were lucky enough to have in their lives until her death at age 89, two years ago.

Don’t let your grandmother be forgotten. Visit, call, write or email her and start collecting her memories while she is still around to be interviewed. If she’s deceased, maybe she left a story of her life. If not, you can still compile her history from interviewing her children (your parents, aunts and uncles.) Did your grandma leave any photos, journals, diaries or did anyone keep any letters she wrote?
They can be used to add personality to her history.

Capturing the essence of a deceased ancestor isn’t easy, but it’s possible. Ask yourself what made your grandmother unique and what memories you want to share with her descendents? Photos of her in different stages of her life can make her more real. I love the picture of my grandmother as a flapper in the 1920s. You can sense her love of life from that image.

Describing her early youth and the times she lived in, gives you the opportunity to introduce her parents (your great grandparents) to their posterity. In a short history you can capture the essence of four generations of your family––yourself, your parents, your grandparents and their parents-your great grandparents. It’s an opportunity to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers. (Malachi 4:6.)
One day we will meet them hopefully with open arms and some knowledge of the contributions their lives made to ours, and not with blank stares wondering who they are. Don’t forget Grandma this Mother’s Day.