Family and friends said good-bye this past Monday morning to my mother-in-law, Yvonne, who died on April 11 at the grand age of 92, even though she told everyone that she was 90. Of course, I only met Yvonne about two and a half years ago, so I have had no long history with her, and that, based on everything that we saw and heard over the last several days and during the ritual of the viewing and funeral, is my loss, for what a legacy she leaves.
She and her husband Chuck had three children, Kurt, Susan, and Linda. She had six grandchildren and twenty (20!) great grandchildren, who all knew her as "Grandma Bonnie", but it seems that she was Grandma Bonnie to just about everyone who came into the spheres of her and her children. The viewing was filled with friends of Kurt, Sue, and Linda who all came to say good-bye to Grandma. A little boy who lived on her street once took her to show-and-tell when he was in first grade, and he made sure that she went with him to the premier of one of the Star Wars movies. That same little boy, now 15 years old, did one of the readings at her funeral Mass on Monday.
My memories of Yvonne will be of nickel poker games and showing her how to play black jack on my FanDuel phone app, after which she asked Linda if she could get that "FanDuel thing" on her phone. (That never happened, btw.) I also loved hearing her stories about the days when she and her husband would follow the Pittsburgh Hornets at the old Duquesne Gardens.
So we begin to move on. Losing a parent, regardless of how long that they have been with us, is never easy, but our parents never really leave us, do they? They live on in the memories that they leave to us, and the values that they have instilled in us. That becomes a parent's greatest legacy.
RIP Grandma Bonnie.
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