Well, I declare

You never really had to guess with Ole Sweet. I’ll definitely give her that. She was never rude or impolite, just straightforward. And smart. Book smart, of course. She was proud to have attended Vanderbilt, and the economic circumstances which prevented her from finishing meant that a college education was something she valued for her children and grandchildren. She owned a book store, lead book discussions, and hosted a show about books on the local cable access channel. It wasn’t the book smarts you had to look out for, though. She never lorded that over anyone. It was her wit that could delight, and sometimes bite, that kept you in line.

Once, when an untold number of grandchildren were piled into her car and the sniping between us became untenable, Ole Sweet ordered a cessation of hostilities. Somebody, probably my brother, dare to retort which was met with an “I am rubber, you are glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” response. We were all stunned into silence because the response was both perfectly timed and perfectly out of character. As elementary school kids, this was a put down we had just begun to use. How our grandmother could know and dispatch it so well was beyond us. The brief pause was broken by peals of laughter from everyone, Ole Sweet included.

She knew the joke as well as anyone. For someone who chose her words as well as Ole Sweet did to choose playground words was silly. While she was not above acting silly on occasion, my grandmother was as careful with many choices, not just her words. She was conservative in many senses of that word. She conserved wrapping paper and aluminum foil because she had lived through the Great Depression. She valued the places she lived and worshiped as they were and did not care to see them change. Above all this, she valued friendships.

For more than 10 years in the late 90s and early 00s, my father and his wife lived in New Jersey. They were busier than they cared to be and lived among people who were busier than they cared to be. When Ole Sweet came to visit, she knew more about the people living in nearby garden homes in one week than my dad and Kay had been able to learn in years. She regularly asked for updates about the neighbors who they did not know they had. She cherished those ties, the longer the better.

It was the cutting of those ties, one by one, which seemed the hardest for her. Losing her husband and siblings, an infant son and later an adult son, and many friends from 98 years of living became ever more difficult to bear. Yet her walls were adorned with pictures of children, grandchildren, great grand children, and great great grandchildren. I was blessed to know that a dream of mine is one held by her mother too, and that in me that dream will live on. As does the memory of Ole Sweet for so many of us. And I suspect what I hear now is the grumbling of my grandfather as she directs him to put another leaf in the table. There is another place to be set tonight as Ole Sweet sits down with old friends and family to visit. Her wit will be known in heaven tonight.