Sarah Jo
This was originally my Facebook post but I'm sharing it here as well My grandmother was unapologetically herself at all times. She was a dramatic woman. She was unique and quirky and smart. So smart. Everything about her was just so very her and here is a short essay on why my grandmother was just a vibe. She had her own art all over the house. Paintings hung on the walls to actually painting the walls. a whole room Winnie Pooh for my dad and a bathroom was pink with beauty and the beast sillioutes painted. The tops of the walls had birds and fairies in the kitchen. Sticker fights. Constantly. We would run through the house covering each other with stickers. She was a teacher so she had millions. This is also why I collected stickers. For years. There was a bookshelf on every wall, in every corner, and along the floorboards for almost the whole house. The woman always had a book. She could read the same book a million times. We'd read for hours, little house on the prairie, maida's little shop, Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, the land of oz. She had a lot of things and kept everything, as most people from that time do, but I never saw it as clutter, it was always something to explore or ask questions about. She had a story for everything, history to tell about it whether it was family history or what was going on in the world when she acquired it. Crystals by the windows so she could see the rainbows come through on the walls. She took pictures of everything. Every. Thing. We'd print pictures from some event out and it's like why'd she take a picture of the door and the window too. Random unnecessary panoramic shots. Who knows but it's something I do too. She wore whatever the hell she wanted. She was modest. But she'd wear anything. Eccentric teacher style. And she did not care what you had to say about it. She was unconditionally supportive of all passions and learning endeavors and if I told her I wanted to learn something I was gonna at least try. And if she decided I was gonna learn something I was gonna learn it, she was a teacher, it was her nature. Her house had spots that just contained magic. There was a little maze of raspberry bushes, a row of blueberry bushes in the front, a swing set covered in grape vines, hills to hide behind, weird trees to climb because I couldn't climb trees but for some reason I could at grandmas. A screened in porch that I always thought was a secret that we would paint and read on. I swear time actually moved different in those spots.Someone in the memorial page wrote she was "a woman ahead of her times" and I would have liked to known her then, or know her as she was then in this time. She was going to tell you what she thought and she did not care what you thought of her for it. She did not make herself small to make anyone comfortable. She didn't adjust herself to fit the crowd or the people she was around. If she wanted to sing she was going to sing she didn't care if it wasnt good. If she wanted to dance she was going to dance. Obviously we reflect when people die and we mourn but recently I've been doing a lot of reflection in general and I've realized that all of that magic she brought into everything felt like it went away when she couldn't "force" me to experience it anymore and her health started to deteriorate in my teens. That magic that I felt in the world and beauty she saw in everything has slowly started coming back as I've gotten older, and more aggressively recently, and I don't know if I would do things like park my car to just look at a sunset or keep blankets in my car for starry nights or even the simple things like just wearing whatever I like even if it looks goofy if in my formative years my grandma wasn't carefully threading whimsy, independence, patience, and uniqueness into every aspect of the day. I didn't appreciate those things as a kid because I just thought I was nothing like her, she was weird, or they were just "normal" things and I didn't really even think about them or their impact on me as a person until recently. Now I'm the weird one. Thanks for