Love the Ones You Have

Hi All. I am quite certain that I have never introduced you to my Grandma Maas. She actually got remarried when I was 10(ish) so her legal name is no longer "Maas" but she will always be Grandma Maas to me. See my Grandpa Gabe died before I was born. My mom was actually very young - around 25 yrs old. So my Grandma was a single gal for many, many years.

One of her best qualities is that she is an AWESOME grandma! When I was growing up she would come over to our house to help with lots of things like: butchering chickens (not my favorite task, however, we made it fun by tying intestines together and....oh wait, not appropriate. Got it), painting the house my parents built or whatever task that was going on. And although this Gram new how to work, what she was best at was having fun!!!

See she wasn't the kind of grandma that was by the rules or so "good" that you couldn't be yourself around. She was more the laughing, giving gifts that were more like a practical jokes, doing and being involved in a kid-like way. She made ya feel like she was your buddy. She had all of the grandkids over to her house at least one weekend a year and we would have a ball by running around and probably not sleeping. She had fun things at her house like bikes that we could ride on tar roads (this was key to a farmers kid who lived on gravel), tennis rackets (again with the farmers kid- pretty cool), and she really liked to play cards. It is funny, as I am sitting here remembering I can still hear my mom, my aunts and my grandma all laughing so hard that tears would roll down their cheeks because they were having such a good time. And then at the end they would stop just for a second to "breath" and then do sorta make a "hump" type of noice all simultaneously together. The memory is as real to me as if I were sitting in Grandma's basement right now with all of them. You know one of my favorite parts of my Grandma - her homemade angel food cake. They were to die for and she made them for every birthday. I sure do love my Grandma Maas.

This is my Grandma now. She battles with Alzheimer's Disease for the past 10 years. It was her birthday recently and she turned 91 years old. My mom wished her to have her last year. We love her so much but it is hard to see my Grandma - the lady I just described to you - like this. Amazingly she still responds to music, the sound of my mom's voice and to a gentle touch. One day she even said she loved me back. That was a special day.

So my thoughts for you: Cherish the ones you love. Never forget them. And remember they still love you.