How to Write a Eulogy for Grandma

Good morning. I'm Sofia. My mom is Lydia, Grandma's oldest daughter. To all of us, she was Buela.

Buela came to this country when she was eighteen. She worked in a laundry in El Paso, ironing shirts for eleven hours a day, and sent most of her pay back home. She told me once that she used to practice English by reading the labels on the starch bottles. She was proud of that. She said it made her the best-pressed English speaker in Texas.

She married my grandfather at twenty-two. They had six kids, twenty-one grandkids, and as of last spring, nine great-grandkids. She knew every single birthday without writing them down.

For me, Buela was Sunday afternoons. Her little blue house on Avenue Q always smelled like cinnamon and fabric softener. There was a bowl of butterscotch candies on the coffee table that never ran out. She'd sit in her chair with a lap full of somebody's mending and listen to whatever we were going on about, school or boys or fights with our parents, and she'd nod and say, "Ay, mija. It will pass." It always did.

When I was in college and homesick, she mailed me a box every month. Tamales wrapped in four layers of foil, a twenty-dollar bill folded into a tiny square, and a note that said only "Eat. Study. Call your mother." I kept every note. There are thirty-one of them.

Buela, you came here with nothing and made a family big enough to fill this church. Every one of us is something you built. We'll keep the candy bowl full. We'll call our mothers.

Te quiero mucho. Rest well.

Hi. I'm Lily. I'm fifteen, and Grandma June was my grandmother.

Grandma taught me how to play gin rummy when I was six. She did not let me win. Not one time. She said if she let me win, it wouldn't mean anything when I finally beat her. I finally beat her when I was eleven. She was so happy she called my dad at work to tell him.

She also taught me how to make biscuits, how to plant tomatoes, and how to say no to people politely but firmly. She said that last one was the most important.

She came to every one of my band concerts, even though she said trombones gave her a headache. She sat in the front row anyway.

Every summer I stayed at her house for two weeks. We'd get up early, before it got hot, and water the garden. She'd let me pick the ripe tomatoes and eat one right there, with salt from a shaker she kept on the porch rail just for that. At night we'd watch game shows and she'd shout the answers at the TV. She was usually right. She was very proud of that.

Last summer she was too tired to garden, so I did it for her while she watched from her chair. She told me I was doing it wrong about six times. Then she said, "You'll get it." I think she meant more than tomatoes.

I'm going to miss her a lot. I'm going to keep playing gin rummy. And I'm going to keep not letting my little brother win.

I love you, Grandma.

Hello, everyone. I'm Ben, one of Dorothy's grandkids. Specifically, I'm the one who broke her Hummel figurine in 1997. She'd want me to tell you I've been forgiven. She'd also want you to know she remembered.

Grandma Dot had opinions. She had opinions about your posture, your haircut, your choice of spouse, and whether you were "really going to wear that to church." She once told my cousin's fiancé, at the engagement party, that he had "a kind face and a weak handshake." They've been married twelve years. His handshake is much better now. You're welcome, Greg.

She played the slot machines at the casino in Ruidoso every October and tracked her winnings in a little notebook. According to the notebook, she was up eleven dollars, lifetime. According to Grandpa, the notebook was fiction.

But Grandma's opinions came from somewhere real. She'd buried a husband, raised four kids through some lean years, and worked the switchboard at the phone company until she was sixty-five. She didn't have time to be vague. When she told you something, she meant it, and when she said she was proud of you, you knew it was true, because she'd have told you otherwise.

She told me she was proud of me exactly twice. Once when I graduated, and once when I sat with her in the hospital for a whole weekend and let her beat me at Scrabble. I still don't know if the second one was a joke.

Grandma, thank you for your honesty, your Hummels, and your eleven dollars. We're all standing up straighter today because of you.

Thank you for coming. I'm Rachel, Margaret's granddaughter.

Most of you know Grandma had Alzheimer's for her last six years. Toward the end, she didn't always know my name. Some days she thought I was her sister, Edna. I learned to answer to Edna. It made her happy, and honestly, Edna sounded like a lot of fun.

I want to spend my few minutes today on the Grandma who came before that, because she deserves to be remembered whole.

She was a nurse for thirty-eight years. She could take your temperature by touching your forehead with the back of her hand, and she was never wrong. She grew roses that won ribbons at the county fair three years in a row, until she decided it was rude to keep winning and stopped entering.

She hummed constantly. Hymns, mostly, and the occasional Patsy Cline song. You always knew where she was in the house because you could hear her.

And here's something I hold on to. Even in her last year, when most of her memories were gone, she still hummed. The nurses at her care home told me she'd hum "How Great Thou Art" while they brushed her hair. Some parts of her were so deep that the disease couldn't reach them.

Grandma, you took care of so many people for so long. I'm glad we got to take care of you at the end. You're whole again now. I hope you're humming.