remembering MawMaw

Last night, my 97 year old great-grandmother Ellen went on ahead of us to be with the Lord. I praise God for her long, healthy and faithful life, and for all the good times we were able to spend with her here on earth. I will miss my sweet MawMaw.

In my brother's words:
"Today my family and I mourn the passing of a woman who has held many children in her loving arms, including my children, myself, my mother, and my grandfather. I can only hope to live my life so fully and continue to have such wit and kindness at her great age of 97. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have known my great-grandmother, she was a wonderful woman."

She had four children, thirteen grandchildren, and many great- and great-great-grandchildren. We all remember her with love.

In MawMaw's honor, I've copied below a little story I wrote for her birthday this year.

For Maw-Maw, on her 97th Birthday

(this post was written September 10, 2010)

My mom asked me to write something for my great-grandmother’s 97th birthday party tomorrow. My family tends to collect stories, rather than objects (I LOVE THAT about my family).

The picture above is a five-generation photo. I look kind of crazy, but since I had just had a baby, you can excuse that, right?

This story is a wee bit sentimental, but let’s go for it anyway.

I had just had my first child, Finnegan. He was less than a month old. Maw-Maw Townsend, who is my great grandmother and Finn’s great-great grandmother, was on her way to Tulsa with her son, Grandpa Stan, and daughter-in-law, Nanny Louise.

They stopped to see us, and we took advantage of the stop to take a five-generation family photo all together. We also had lunch together – Jonathan went and picked up hamburgers for all of us.

As we were eating our hamburgers, Maw-Maw Townsend was asking me about Finn, and she started reminiscing a bit about her own babies. She looked across the table at her 79-year-old son, and said,

“They grow up so fast.”

It was so sweet, and so funny, and so poignant. Even though he was then almost eighty years old, she still remembers her son as a baby. And even though it had been almost eight decades, that time—the time she had spent watching him grow into a young man, and then an older man, and then a great-grandfather—seemed to go by quickly. It was a reminder to me, as I held my newborn son, to treasure his childhood, and to enjoy the moments we have together.

May we as all be as blessed as Maw-Maw Townsend, to be able to give our great-grandchildren the same wisdom about our great-great grandchildren:

“They grow up so fast.”

To see more photos of MawMaw, click on the links to the posts below.

http://gianniandco.blogspot.com/2008/08/meeting-5th-generation.html

http://gianniandco.blogspot.com/2009/05/adoption-party.html

http://gianniandco.blogspot.com/2010/01/mlk-weekend.html