Eulogy for Gramma Mary

Hi. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Karin.  My mother is Priscilla Franklin.  Mary Kyncl Wendt was my Gramma.  I would like to begin by thanking all of you who have given my mother emotional and spiritual support while she has been coping with the illness and loss of my grandmother.  My mother is very, very precious to me and so anyone who provides love and support to her is also very precious to me.

Of all my grandparents, I was by far the closest to my Gramma Mary.  I feel very lucky that I got to have her in my life for so long.  My sister Stacey and I spent several weeks every summer of our childhood staying at my grandparent’s house in Kenosha, WI.  It was an absolutely heavenly place for kids and I have wonderful memories of those visits.

My gramma’s kitchen had the wonderful aroma of years and years of  authentic Bohemian cooking made from recipes brought over from Czechoslovakia in my great grandmother’s head and passed on to her daughters orally:   Shiske, knedleky, zalle, vepshove, plum dumplings, scrubanky, povidla, bukdoo, kolache, slumgullion, and cleba.  Of all of these my absolute favorite was my gramma’s home-made cleba, or bread.  It filled the house with a warm, yeasty, heavenly aroma that would make my mouth water and my spirits soar.  Over the course of my adult life I have eaten bread at five star restaurants, from the finest European bakeries, and homemade from the kitchens of various friends and relatives.  But I have never found any bread anywhere which could even come close to the smell and taste and feel of my grandmother’s cleba.  It was so good that I refused to let my gramma put anything on it—no butter or jam or honey.  She was always so surprised that I just wanted that first warm slice fresh from the oven absolutely plain.  The crust was always a perfect golden brown, not too chewy and not too crunchy, and the inside was soft and fluffy and white.  The taste was indescribable—like edible sunshine.

My gramma Mary was a stunning woman.  There is a picture of her when she was in her twenties, wearing a 1920’s style dress of a light color—white or pink—and a hat called a cloche which is longer on one side of her head than the other.  She could easily be taken for a movie star in this picture.  Mary Pickford couldn’t hold a candle to my grandmother!  She is made up in the 20’s style with red rosebud lips and rosy cheeks and is posed with one hand on her tiny hip giving the photo a sweet but saucy attitude.  She was just so incredibly beautiful! By the end of her life, she was a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother and she was still beautiful. The most beautiful thing about her was her smile.  She had one of those smiles that just lights up an entire room.  I loved her smile and I adored her laugh.  Sometimes something would strike her as funny and she would laugh and laugh and you couldn’t help but laugh with her.

When my mother called to tell me that my gramma had had a stroke and gone into a coma just three days before I was due to arrive in Denver, I was truly broken-hearted.  I had wanted so much to talk to her again and I was so close to being there.  I was disappointed, frustrated, sad, and anxious.  I was anxious because it was very important to me to get to Denver before she died.  I had things I wanted to say to her, and I wanted to be there to support her through this final step.  My mother knew how important this was to me and so she told gramma that I was coming to see her very soon and even though gramma had been unresponsive for several days, she opened her eyes and looked right at my mother for several seconds after my mother told her this.  My mom really thinks that somehow my gramma understood that I was coming.  My mom called me in California to say that she thought Gramma would wait for me.  I had a really good cry after hearing about that.  Then, very suddenly, I felt this urgent need to bring something to read to my Gramma.  I don’t know why I felt I needed to do this, I just did.  The very first book which popped into my mind was a book called The Secret Garden.  I hadn’t read this book in years and the details of it were pretty hazy, but somehow I knew it would be perfect.

Gramma Mary did wait for me.  In fact I was able to spend three days with her before she died.  I told her over and over how much I loved her and what a wonderful grandmother she had always been.  I stroked her hair and held her tiny hands.  And I read to her.  From the very first page I knew I had chosen an amazingly perfect book to read to her.   In the first place, the main character in the book is a little girl named Mary.  Early on in the story some children are teasing Mary for being a rather sour, stubborn little girl by reciting the rhyme Mary, Mary Quite Contrary.  I couldn’t help but giggle when I read this because my gramma, as kind and loving as she was, had quite a stubborn streak in her and this particular children’s rhyme suited this aspect of her personality to a tee.

There are two stories in particular that my mom has told me about my gramma that illustrate her strong will rather humorously.  The first is that while gramma lived with my mother and stepfather she would occasionally have a fit of temper over something and become sullen and angry with my mother.  When she would get this way, she would stomp off into her bedroom and shut the door and stop communicating with everyone.  This could go on for anywhere from a few hours to a few days.  The first sign of the storm being over would be when Gramma would open her door again.  My mother says she got so she could tell exactly how mad gramma was by how far open that bedroom door was.  If it was shut tight, gramma was very angry, but if it was part way open she was less angry and communication might be possible, and if the door were all the way open then gramma was ready to forgive and forget.

The second story which really shows how my gramma held on to her sense of independence right up to the end of her life happened only a few weeks before she died.  The nurses at the nursing home were trying to get Gramma out of bed in the morning but she just really did not want to get up.  So my little tiny 4’10” 105lb 95 year old gramma, who was in both heart and kidney failure, hauled off and punched one of the nurses right in the face.  I know this must not have been very pleasant for the nurse but I couldn’t help but be secretly delighted with gramma’s spunk!

In addition to all these smaller ways in which The Secret Garden turned out to be such a  good choice, it is the main themes running through the book which truly made it ideal.  It is a book about renewal, rebirth, and healing.  It is full of the beautiful imagery of  dormant gardens springing to life which mirror the spiritual awakening of its characters.  It is a fairly long book, some 300 pages, and I knew that I most likely would not reach the end of it before gramma died.  But I was able, thankfully, to reach the most important part of the book.   On the estate where contrary little Mary lives, there is a long neglected secret garden surrounded by a wall with a locked gate for which there is no key.  Mary decides that no matter what, she will find the lost key and enter the secret garden.  She searches and searches the grounds outside the wall but cannot find the key anywhere.  Then at long last, a robin redbreast who she has befriended  lands near a freshly dug hole in the earth to search for worms and as Mary’s eyes follow his movements she sees the rusty old key half buried in the dirt.  Mary retrieves the key, opens the long locked gate, and enters the secret garden.  This is the true beginning of Mary’s healing and salvation.  I was deeply grateful to have been able to get to this point in the story before gramma died.  My mother and I were not there when my gramma found the key to her own unique secret garden and stepped through.  It was Christmas day and we arrived only a few minutes after she died.  We felt sad not to have been there, but then my mother said something really beautiful.  She said that Gramma was a birthday gift for Jesus on Christmas Day.  I just thought that was such a lovely thing to say.  I never stop learning from my mother.  The more I learn, the wiser she seems. I don’t know what gramma saw when she entered her secret garden, but I like to think of her being reunited with her son Jimmy who died at age three, and her sister Rosie who was her best friend through most of her life.  I like to think of her well and whole and pain free, standing in a magnificent garden filled with beautiful flowers and warm sunshine.  I envision her happy, healthy and enfolded in love.

During the last few days of Gramma’s life I was a witness to tremendous acts of love, devotion, and wisdom demonstrated by my mother.  My mother could not possibly have done more to bring peace and comfort to my grandmother during the last week of her life.  My mother was at gramma’s bedside almost constantly.  She gently and lovingly bathed and turned gramma to keep her clean, warm and comfortable.  She rinsed gramma’a mouth to keep it moist and to prevent ulcers from forming due to her kidney failure.  She wiped the uric acid crystals, also a result of severe kidney failure, from gramma’s face.  She made certain the nursing home staff were checking gramma’s vital signs regularly and reminded them to turn her when she wasn’t there.  She made sure that a high quality pain medication was specially ordered and kept available should Gramma show signs of discomfort.  She spoke to gramma, caressing her hands and face, and telling her over and over again what a wonderful mother she had been and how much she was loved.  I cannot possibly describe the singular beauty and poignancy with which my mother attended my grandmother those last few days.  I can only say that I will carry that exquisite picture of daughterly devotion in my heart always.

I would like now to say thank you to my gramma for a few of the countless gifts she gave me over the years.  Thank you for taking the time to teach me to do needlework ( I still have the crewel-work leopard we did together).  Thank you for doing my laundry.  Thank you for your beautiful smile.  Thank you for sewing me such lovely dresses and knitting those tiny adorable rugs for my dollhouse. Thank you for comforting me when I was homesick or having a bad day.  Thank you for letting me walk in the warm summer rain in my bathing suit and bare feet.  Thank you for having skin as soft as rose petals. Thank you for teaching me words in Bohemian.  Thank you for sharing all those fascinating stories of your childhood.  Thank you for telling me the story of how my great grandparents came to America from Czechoslovakia and made a new life for themselves here. Thank you for letting me stay up late to chase fireflies in the backyard or watch Johnny Carson with grampa.  Thank you for drawing my baths.  Thank you for always making me feel safe and loved.  I miss you so much.

My gramma and I had a little game we played from the time I was young.  She would say “I love you” and I would say “I love you more” and then she would say “I love YOU more” and we would go back and forth until we both  started giggling.  And so the last thing I would like to say today is Gramma, I Love you More!