A True Great

As many of you know, my great-grandmother, Mamaw Lettie, passed away last Sunday night at the age of 100. When I tell people this, they are usually surprised that I had a great-grandmother still living! I also find myself explaining that she was much closer to me than you might think a great-grandmother would be. She and my grandmother (her daughter) were neighbors and best friends for my entire life, which meant that she was just about everywhere my grandmother was. We really thought of her as an extra grandparent, and a wonderful one at that.

My favorite memory of Mamaw Lettie is that she would always tell my sister and me to "be careless" whenever we would leave her (as opposed to the usual grandparent warning, "be careful"). She really wanted us to enjoy life and not take things too seriously. I also remember playing Skip-Bo with her, learning how to sew a nine-patch, and the great sense of humor she had. As she got older, she seemed to think she could get away with saying just about anything, and that made her lots of fun to be around!

We were so lucky to have her in our lives for so long, and I know she was ready to go (in fact, she bet a family friend $100 that she wouldn't be there for her 101st birthday!). The one thing that makes me especially sad is that she and our daughter never had a chance to meet. Had she made it to June, we would have had five generations of women together. Believe it or not, my great-great-grandmother was alive when I was born, and we have the picture to prove it. But as it turns out, Matthew and I knew we were having a baby at Mamaw Lettie's 100th birthday in October--so little Baby Blaze is actually in the picture above! We got our five generations picture after all.

I'll miss you, Mamaw Lettie--I can't wait to tell Baby Blaze all about you.