{love}

It has been a bit of a rough week with my Grampa going into the hospital last weekend with bacterial pneumonia and slipping into a coma on Sunday and then passing away on Tuesday. We are having services for him tomorrow, it will be a very love filled gathering as all of his 7 children will be there most of his 30 grandchildren and a good portion of his 65 great grandchildren as well. And while it is always bitter when you lose someone that you love very much, my faith that he has gone on to spend eternity with his cherished wife and adored mother and father carries me through my grief.
It is funny that for the last 3-4 weeks I have been thinking about him a lot. No reason really, just pondering him, his life, his choices and how lucky I am to have had such an inspirational example in my life for so long. He was a very simple man that could fix almost anything. So creative in his problem solving and even though they didn't have lots of worldly possessions, his family never lacked for anything. He worked constantly, even at night when he had to be exhausted from all of the days work and the service that he provided to others he would sit to watch the television with my gramma and he would make clothes hangers. When we visited for the night if we wanted to watch with them we were expected to make hangers too. It was fun, easy and made us all feel productive even in our most relaxed state of the day. I am sure that there are thousands of those hangers in all of the families and friends closets and most of his grandchildren could show others how to make them if we had the supplies at hand.
Anyway, I feel extraordinarily blessed to have his example of selfless and unconditional love in my life and feel that it has helped shape me into a lot of who I am today.

Good bye for now Grampa, I hope that I can follow in your steps knowing that you followed in the steps of the Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. Until we meet again, I will keep you with much {love} in my heart.
B-