Adeline

On Monday morning my Grandma Adeline passed away.

Today was the funeral and I wrote this and read it aloud during the service - tears streaming down my face.



I loved asking her questions.

I especially loved hearing about when she grew up - what life was like for her as a girl, as a teenager and when she was raising my Dad.

We would pull out the old photo albums from the box at the top of her closet and sit on her couch.

She would know EVERY SINGLE person in those old black and white photos.

She would point out the family hardware store and tell me the stories of working there. She would point out her parents and her grandparents. Then the ones of my grandfather and her on their wedding day – she would tell me that she had been so young.

But my favorite photos have to be the countless arm in arm photos of the four Setran Sisters! She would turn to me and say they always posed like that.

She had stories for each photo and they would come pouring out - she had the most amazing memory.

I just kept asking questions and loved to listen to her answers.


Her house at 3009 holds many memories for me – her piano, the record player, her bedroom, the pool table, the clapping monkey, the wallpaper in the front porch. There are moments and images I will never forget about that house and the feeling it ensued when entering its doors...but there is ONE in particular that I just can’t seem to get out of my head...

It’s just me and Grandma on the balcony upstairs. She asks me if I REALLY want her to do it?

I say yes as my eyes widen with anticipation and my heart races...and then I screamed!

She had taken out her front teeth and my eyes had never seen anything scarier! I had asked and she had warned me!!!

She was the organizer, the planner, the program director and the choreographer. She took risks and laughed at her mistakes. She held her own in a room full of family and friends and usually was the one to make everyone laugh.

I will miss stopping in for visits, out of the blue phone calls, hearing how much she won at the casino, her postcards from Arizona and her lefsa. But most all I will miss her laugh.

She was a generous and incredibly thoughtful woman that I had the honor to call my Grandma.


This is what today looked like in Minnesota.