She Almost Made It to 101

Well, she almost made it to 101. My grandmother passed away last Friday and was buried yesterday. Just a simple graveside ceremony...she never wanted to be any trouble to anybody. Her 101st birthday would have been December 4th.

She was doing really well and living in a nursing home just a block away from where my father and step-mother live, so they could visit her regularly. It's the town where my husband and daughters and I lived for 11 years, too, so I knew all the folks at the church who would be checking up on her, and that was nice.

Grandma was 98 before she gave up living on her own and finally moved to a nursing home. She was still getting around pretty well with her walker until a few weeks ago.

She was ready to go, though, and had lived a long and happy life. So although I'll miss her terribly, I know it was her time. And I know where she is now.

For years, my grandmother and "Granddaddy Cy" ran a hamburger stand in Temple, Texas on South First Street. When my father was a ministerial student at Baylor University, he introduced many of his classmates to them and got them hooked on the specialty of the house, the "Cyburger". As these students scattered to preach and lead revivals in many small town churches around central Texas, they knew they could always get a burger on the way back to the campus. And help was always available if they had a flat tire or needed a tow. When my husband was a student at Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth I met many of my father's former classmates and they'd get a little twinkle in their eye and say "I remember those hamburgers!" Later, when my husband was a campus minister at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton one of our students was doing her student teaching at a school up the road in Temple. I had told her stories of my father's roots in that area, so she knew just what the teacher was talking about when she mentioned the wonderful hamburgers they used to make at a little hamburger place on South First Street.




Here's a picture of her (undated) with a baby that I think is my older sister, her first grandchild. I've started to digitally clean this one up some, because it's got a lot of spots and creases on it. It'll take a while to finish that project, though, so I'll go ahead and share it with you as it is because I love her smile in this one.