On August 1, 2023, my grandmother, Lucille Nylander, passed away after a short illness, with her family at her bedside. At 96 years old, it still came as a shock. My grandmother and I were very close which is why I’ve had enormous difficulty trying to write about it, which is one way I process things, and is why I haven’t done so until now. This last Friday, we held a funeral/celebration of life, and I was asked to give a speech. People have asked if they could see the speech, so I’m posting it in its entirety here and adding some appropriate pictures:
I’ve been struggling to write this for a while, but it’s been very difficult to put into words. What do you say about someone who has been a consistent and significant part of your life for 45 years? Someone who was always supportive of your interests and your efforts, even if she didn’t always fully understand them herself. Someone who always had your back and was always there when you needed her, and now she’s suddenly not there. But I’m going to try, anyway.
My grandmother and I had a unique relationship. There’s the idea that the relationship between a boy and his grandmother is special, but with us, I think that was compounded by the fact that I was not only her oldest grandchild by about a decade, but I was also her only grandson. She was an incredibly fierce defender of her family, too. When I was a child, I had strep throat for six months because the insurance company wouldn’t authorize the tonsillectomy. My grandmother marched into the doctor’s office and demanded they authorize the surgery and refused to leave until they did so. Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand why she was fighting for more medical procedures for me, but, of course, looking back now I know that she quite possibly saved me.
She was a financial wizard and was always ready to help or advise with any question we would have. If there was any quirk to her, I would have to say it was her penchant for the Home Shopping Network, even in the age of the Internet. I remember she would give us some odd gifts from HSN. But if you want to know what made this especially funny, even though these gifts seemed odd at the time, they would often prove to be very, sometimes surprisingly, useful. Like the time she gave me and others portable air compressors as gifts, which seemed strange at the time. I had no idea when I would use something like that. But literally a few months later I got a flat tire and my spare turned out to be flat, too, and needed to be inflated on the side of the road. It was like she had a sixth sense about these things, like the peddler in that old Twilight Zone episode “What You Need” (if you’re not sure of the one I’m talking about, go find it and watch it; it’s a good episode).
She was not only very proud of being a grandmother to five grandchildren but also to one great-grandchild, even though she didn’t like being called “Great Grandma.” We ended up settling on “Grandma Lucy.” I’ll never forget when Olivia and I went to tell her that we were having a baby. She literally jumped off the couch, shouting “Hallelujah!” I really wish I had recorded that moment. It was then that she told us that the one thing she wanted more than anything was to meet at least one of her great-grandchildren and had been praying for this. And with Vivy being born a little more than a week before Christmas, her prayers were answered as she got to meet her great-granddaughter on Christmas Eve.
Unfortunately, she broke her hip shortly after Vivy was born, so she didn’t have a chance to full-on play with her the way I’m sure she wanted to, due to being bed/couchridden. But I’m thankful that she didn’t just get to meet Vivy after she was born but had the opportunity to see her grow over the next four years into a sweet little girl who, whenever we would visit, would come running over to the couch where her “Grandma Lucy” was lying down and would give her a hug and a kiss, and my grandmother saying, “There’s my girl.”
One of the things that makes losing her so difficult is that she was still very much there right up to the last moment. Her mind was always so sharp; it was just her body that was failing her. When I went to visit her in the hospital near the end, even though she was having trouble with muscle control and fully forming words, when she saw me come into the room, she still managed to give me that smile that always reached her eyes, saying what she always said when she saw me: “Oh, hi Shel!” And as I sat with her and told her about Vivy and what she was up to, my grandmother still managed to laugh.
Now, while we may not have her physically here with us anymore, we’re left with wonderful memories of her. I really hope, despite her young age, that Vivy is able to hold onto the good memories of the time she got to spend with her Grandma Lucy, and as she grows up I look forward to sharing my own memories of my grandmother, like the time my grandmother found a rattlesnake in her yard and killed it, buried the head (as you’re supposed to do), and came back for the rest but found that the neighbor’s dog ate it..To her, it was a funny story about the dog, but almost everyone else got stuck on the fact that she just prepared, confronted, and dealt with a potentially deadly snake and glossed over it like it was nothing. When people pointed that out to her, she would say, “Well, there are children around. It’s not safe. What was I supposed to do?”
Even now, weeks after her passing, something comes up that makes me think of my grandmother and I’m not ashamed to admit that I tear up a little. I don’t feel like I’ve fully absorbed the fact that she’s gone now, but at least we know that she no longer has any pain, and I take comfort in knowing that she had a long and joyous life filled with family, friends, and laughter. I’m thankful for that, but I still miss her and I know that I always will.
SheldonNylander.com 