December 16, 1913 - July 22, 2008

Today is the day we said goodbye to my grandmother for the last time. She passed at a little after 2:30 in the afternoon. She was 94 years young.

As my friend Carol said, 94 years was quite a long ride.

Her three children--my mother, Doris, and aunts Kathy and Susan--were with her, along with my cousin, Shannon, her husband, Jason, and me.

She fought a brave fight during the two months since her stroke. I stood there, beside her bed, watching her struggle to breathe. She was strong all the way to the end. I was just about to tell her it was okay to let go, that the time had finally come for her pain to end, when she took her last breath.

Way back when Eric, now 18, was a baby, I'd often drive past a beautiful, flowering tree, admiring the bunches of dark-pink blossoms, wondering what it was. Grandma was the one who told me. She said it had always been one of her favorite flowering trees. It is one of my favorites, too.

Since that day, seeing a flowering crape myrtle tree, like that pictured here, always makes me think of Grandma. She and I shared a lot of laughs over the years.

She was a wonderful lady. A fixture in our lives over the years. She'll really be missed.