Grandma Esther

My grandmother, Esther, passed away a week ago. She was the most positive, ebullient person I have ever met. She was irrepressible.

Grandma lost a good chunk of her life savings in a ponzi scheme some years ago. But I never saw any bitterness or self-pity in her after that. In fact, I never saw bitterness or self-pity in her at any time.

She had a massive stroke later in life. But Grandma figured that the average human only uses a small part of his brain anyway. Grandma figured she had plenty of healthy brain mass left. So she contacted a professional hypnotherapist and told him she needed to "re-route" her neural pathways. And that's just what she did. A few years later, she was herself again, and no one who hadn't known about the stroke would have guessed she had had one.

Grandma traveled the world up through her 80s. She was in her 80s when she came to visit us in Alaska and made her last trips to South America, Europe and Hawaii. I am sure that I couldn't manage to write a comprehensive list of all the places she had been, so I won't try. But she had certainly traveled more extensively than I have.

Grandma was a great writer, an amazing cook and a master quilter.  

She could play the organ without ever having taken a lesson. She said she knew how to play it the first time she sat down at the instrument.  

Music, creativity, kindness--so many things--just ran through her veins. Those were things she never had to learn.

Grandma had hardships, but she met them with a laugh and a shrug. And if things were really bad, a cathartic swear word. Then she'd laugh again.

Grandma used to say that someday she'd die running to catch a train to the next stop. And so she did.

We will miss her so much.