Most Moving Ceremony

The Curious as a Cat question I connect with this week is “When were you most moved by a ceremony?” So, without further ado ...

A few months ago, as I've alluded to in a previous post, my paternal grandmother passed away. She'd lived a good portion of her adult life in a town of about 4000 people, and the vast majority of them knew her by name. She had raised three boys in the town and her husband ran the local grocery store. After he died, she was the secretary at the Lutheran church for twenty some odd years, and even after she retired from that post, she was very much involved with the church. Needless to say, she'd touched many lives, and when we had the memorial service, several of the locals got up to tell stories about her. It was so amazing to be able to share in these anecdotes that other people had. I was never as proud to be a part of that family as I was then.

A few of the boys that grew up with my dad and his brothers shared their stories about how they'd been practically raised by her and several of the other moms in the neighborhood. While they were sharing their stories, I was remembering my own. From the time I could ride a bike, I was going to grandma's house on my own. My mom and dad would be fighting, and I'd go to her house to get away. She was an extra parent to me for most of my childhood. So, her death and the various ceremonies surrounding it were the most moving to me.

Since we made the decision to remove her from the ventilator, and we knew it wouldn't be long before she was gone, we called her pastor. Pastor Ginny came down to the hospital, and we were all permitted to be in the room in ICU as she was performing the Lutheran version of the last rites. Because Pastor Ginny knew Grandma (they'd worked together and become friends over the years) she read some of Grandma's favourite passages from the Bible, and then she sang her favourite hymns. We were all standing around her bed as Pastor prayed. All of us, including Pastor, with tears streaming down our faces.

My grandmother was an amazing woman. I'm glad I got to know her as well as I did.