Remembering VERA MAE

Vera....if I could use one word to describe her it would be another "V" word: VIVACIOUS.

Vera is my grandma. My beloved grandma. I miss her so much. The anniversary of her passing came not too long ago, it's been a year since she left us quietly in her sleep. I feel her presence around me more now than ever. Her birthday is coming up very soon and I think that just breathes live back into her memory even more.

My grandma believed in pennies from heaven and she never passed up a penny she saw on the ground. That was her thing, she collected pennies from Heaven. Well, that and BINGO! I never seen a person more crazy about bingo and luckier than she was at winning it. In fact, she was still playing bingo regularly right up until she died. She would play 6 cards, never miss a number and tell you which numbers you had missed on yours sitting beside her.

She was 92 when she died and she was a real looker. She had gorgeous legs made for dancing and she loved to dance and did it often. She went faithfully for 50 years and had her hair "done" every week at the beauty shop. She painted both her fingernails and toenails red and wore red lipstick. She never left the house without her make-up on and she was always dressed to the nines. She loved three things in life: earrings, shoes and Danielle Steele books. She collected ALL of them. The woman literally had a shoe collection that would shame Imelda Marcos, she coveted as many pairs of earrings and she had every book ever written by Danielle Steele.

She was the life of the party and people loved to laugh with and at her. She was the best grandma ever. She had a lot of grandchildren and even more great grandchildren and a few great, great children when she passed, but she had this unique way of making you feel as if you were the one and only grandchild she ever had. She could spoil you like no other. She never missed an opportunity to tell me she loved me or how "purdy" she thought I was. Ever. She told me often and I believed her with all my heart.

When I had my first miscarriage, she sent me a card with a lovely letter inside telling me that she understood my heartache and then went on to tell me about the little girl she had that died of unknown causes when she was 9 mths old. How I had lived to be 34 and never knew that about my own Grandma was unbelievable. I felt even more closer to her at the moment and when I had my second miscarriage, she called me on the phone and we just cried together. No words were needed.

When Ivy was diagnosed with autism, she called me one day to tell me that she was thinking of me and she missed not hearing from me as often, but she knew that I had my hands full and that she wasn't holding it against me. She told me that she understood how hard my life was at the time, but she was sure God chose the right Mommy for Ivy, because she knew how strong I was and how much of a fighter I could be if I needed to be. I seized the moment then and told her how grateful I felt to be her granddaughter and how much I loved her and I was so sorry for not calling more often. I told her that I never not once growing up ever felt I was not loved by her. I never felt that any of my cousin's were loved more than me either, that she had always made me feel so special over the years. I felt like I had to say it, because I knew she was getting older and I felt like I wanted her to know how grateful I was for her love and her friendship. To this day, I am so glad I had the chance to say how I felt to her.

So anyway, about those pennies....we have been trying so hard to raise money for DC, right? Well, starting the day of the anniversary of her passing, I began finding pennies. Weird, right? Yeah, it is, but I just think it's my Grandma's way of telling me she has arrived and she is here for me and even from heaven, she is helping me get to DC. To date, I have found exactly 16 cents and every one of those will be spent towards the trip.

I miss her and I just had to write about her and how I marvel at her presence in my life right now. She was that way in real life and she is that way in the after life. So, here's to you, my beautiful Vera Mae......



This is one of favorite picture's of the girls and My Grandma. This was right after Ivy's 1st birthday and Ivy fell in the bathtub the night before her BD party and split open her eye and she had 5 stitches in the crease of her eyelid on her right eye and then the next week, Jade ran straight into a door jam and split open her forehead...hers was super glued together in ER.
I laugh at this picture with my 2 accident prone girls! Ivy with a black eye and stitches and Jade with her big knot, bruise and glued together forehead.