Grandma, 1921-2004
I have many, many cousins, products of my grandparents' eight children. Most of those cousins have been blessed with some sort of special talent. For a few of them, that talent is a beautiful singing voice.

The story goes that it was the voice of one of those cousins who sang my grandmother to sleep shortly before April 4 became April 5. As 20-year-old Rachel sang "Amazing Grace," a small smile crossed my grandmother's lips, and, while she was tapping along with the time of the song, went to be with her Lord.

My grandmother has earned her rest. She put in 82 pretty hard years on this earth. She was born to migrant-worker parents in a small town in north Texas. They weren't prosperous people even before the stock market crashed, when my grandmother was 7, and the Depression didn't help. My grandmother quit school when she was 11 to help raise her eight siblings. She got married five years later and gave birth to nine children of her own.

Her first child died very young, of some sort of childhood disease that doesn't kill people any more. Shortly thereafter, her oldest brother died in World War II. There are those who say she would have recovered from the death of her son -- childhood diseases were hard to avoid back then -- but that the death of her brother left a void that was never filled.

She went on, however -- "The sun will come up tomorrow," she often told me, "whether you want it to or not" -- and left an impression upon everybody with whom she came into contact. You often hear at funerals, "Nobody had a bad word to say about (the deceased)," but in my grandmother's case, it was true. Testament to the effect she had on members of her family: Four of her sons' ex-wives attended her funeral service. Once you were a member of Grandma's family, you were always a member.

She had a unique ability to view everybody through a totally objective prism. She didn't fail to acknowledge people's faults; she merely accepted them as a part of being human. She knew that many of the people she loved were flawed, and she accepted them just the same -- although she would deliver a scolding when she felt it was appropriate, and when she did, you knew she meant it.

She had a special love for children; it was one of the crowning moments of my life when she picked up my oldest daughter for the first time.

She had been in declining health for several years; I am reminded of this from a couple of years ago.

I wasn't particularly sad when I received the news of her death; I was more relieved that, after many scares, she had finally been allowed to move on. She leaves behind my grandfather, who is 86 and in poor health of his own. She leaves behind a bunch of people who are better people for having been a part of her family.

I wasn't there for the anecdote with which I led; that's the story as it was related to me. I was there, however, for her final trip through Springfield, Mo., the town which she called home for more than 50 years (while secretly and not-so-secretly pining for her beloved Texas).

As she got older, Grandma had a tendency to, shall we say, think out loud. She would say things that she clearly didn't intend to be heard, but because she wasn't hearing anything well -- including herself -- she wasn't aware she was saying them. One time we were sitting in her house, and a white Coupe de Ville pulled up at the house across the street. "That's going to be him sometime," she said of me, "pulling up here to see me in a white Caddy."

As she was driven through Springfield one last time -- in a white Cadillac -- traffic stopped on both sides of every major street in town as her family followed behind, in a procession more than half a mile long.

Had she been an observer of that scene, as my favorite aunt pointed out, she would have said, "That must be some high-falutin dude to stop traffic like that."

And she would have been extremely upset that all these people were making such a fuss over her -- outwardly, at least.

She would have admitted, in an unguarded moment, that it was pretty cool.

A better obit for her can be found here. I'm proud to have known her, and a better person for it. Goodbye, Grandma, and peace to you. Keep an eye on me up there.