Luck to her.
She’s in my thoughts, still. As are you and your family.
I hope she likes the candies.
-D/a
Sending thoughts for all of you.
So true. Your grandmother is in my thoughts, Baker, and so are you.
Just checking in…Baker, how’s she doing?
-D/a
I’m sorry to say she is getting worse. She has not responded to family in two days, and has refused to eat for a week. I can’t help but think that Thanksgiving this year is going to be more of a wake. We will be giving thanks for having known a soul as blessed as hers is. My aunt and her daughter, my cousin, are already sorting the pictures for one of those memorial DVD’s that get run at funeral receptions, with pictures from out of the life of the deceased. I jump whenever the phone rings because I think that this time it’s going to be “the call”.
And Digital? Thanks for checking in and caring, it helps, it really does.
She’s one hundred and eight, god love her, and she’s still in the driver’s seat. And as you surely know in your heart, she is embarking on her journey. You’re right - give thanks for her life and her indomitable soul. I know it isn’t easy. But it’s for the best. It’s her time, and she knows.
I’m sorry to hear it’s not better news. It’s good that you and your family are coming together and that you have each other at this time. It doesn’t matter how old someone you love is, it always seems too soon when their time comes.
Aww crap. I was..am..hoping for a miraculous recovery. But at least you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’s lived a full, satisfying life. I hope her remaining days are peaceful.
Was she still responsive when you got her those candies? I’m sure it brought a smile, if she was.
SDMB is a family. Internet strangers/imaginary friends, but still family. 
-D/a
I’m sorry she’s fading, Baker. 
{{{Baker and Family}}} I agree with InternetLegend, no matter how old someone is, it always seems to soon. Be thankful you got her stories down to share with family and to read. It just has to be fascinating to realize all she has seen, all she has witnessed all that has happened in her life span. If these are her final days, may they be peaceful. I know she’ll be surrounded with love and she knows this as well.
I’m sorry she’s failing, Baker. No matter how long you have, you always wish it could be just a little longer.
StG
There’s nothing really comforting to say at a time like this, but all we have on a message board is words. So consider this a sympathetic glance across the room, a tentative smile, and a hug if you want one.
Yes, all we have are words, but my best wishes are with you and your wonderful grandmother.
When you can, please share her memories with us. She will will live on in those words.
And all we have to convey our beings are words, gestures and actions.
And upon this medium, all we have are words.
Bright blessings, Baker.
I’m sorry the news isn’t better, Baker. Hugs for you and your whole family.
“No man’s life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, to include each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to the record and to try to find one’s way to the heart of the man…”
The words above appear at the opening of the movie “Gandhi”. If you change “man” to “woman” you will understand how hard it is for me to write anything that will show the life of my grandmother and her spirit. All I can do is throw out some stories that illustrate what she meant to me and to others, now that she has gone on to Heaven.
Esther Lura (Kasson) Lietz was born December 17th, 1904, one year to the day after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. That in itself will give some idea of what she saw in a long, long life. She was the last of six children, only two of which lived long enough to see their own grandchildren. Life was precarious back then. She says one of her first memories was when, as a very young child, her mother was nursing most of the family through a diptheria outbreak. Many people were sick, but Esther was not, so her mother took her to family friends, a childless couple, so she would have more time for the rest of the family. This couple became so enamored of little Esther that they asked to adopt her. My great-grandmother, on learning of this, immediately fetched her daughter home. Grandma said “They treated me like a little princess!”
Oddly enough, for that time and place, the family was not a member of any church. Grandma told me she attended a Methodist Sunday School a few times, with friends, but nothing more than that.
Esther became a school teacher in a one room school house, the same kind she had attended herself. Back then all you had to do was pass a state test to be allowed to teach. One day she forgot her key to the school and a young man across the road, plowing the field with four mules, helped boost her in the window. It was not the first time she had met Emil, but it sure wouldn’t be the last, as eventually he became my grandfather. She told me once about seeing him in a school play, in which he was the hero and wore English style riding boots. “He was so dashing!” she said.
Emil and Esther began seeing each other. He was from a family of German heritage, Lutheran by religion. On December 24th, 1923, Esther attended her first church service. “I was impressed by the Christmas tree, but I didn’t understand of word of anything, it was all in German!”
The couple became engaged but there was a problem. School teachers had to quit their job if they got married, and she wanted to finish the school year. Heck, the two previous teachers had married Emil’s older brothers, and the school board head had been heard to say they wouldn’t be able to keep a teacher until the Lietz boys got married. The problem became moot when Emil and Esther quarreled and she broke off the engagement. But that didn’t last of course, and it was patched up.
Patched up so well that Emil wanted to get married now, as in * right now.* He knew a good catch when he saw it. But Esther insisted she needed to tell her parents. Besides, they had planning to do if they were to keep the marriage a secret so she could still teach. The following weekend the couple traveled by train to Liberty, Missouri, one county past Kansas City, Missouri. This was so legal notices wouldn’t appear in the KC papers, which some of the country Kansas farmers followed and might see. A Lutheran minister in Kansas City that my grandfather knew married them. Emil, of all his brothers, didn’t want to be a farmer, so he’d left home at eighteen to go to auto mechanics school in the big city. Returning home they lived apart for the rest of the school year, he in Topeka, and she in Paxico. They’d see each other on the weekends. If she came to Topeka they’d go to a hotel, a young couple “sneaking around” Grandma told me * “I can still remember how those desk clerks would look at us” * I hope this doesn’t sound awful, but it isn’t something you ordinarily think about, one’s grandparents being young and in lust.
Then Esther moved into town with her husband. She was finally baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran, an adult convert. She never left St. John’s, in Topeka, the congregation she joined, and became a pillar of the church. She taught Sunday School, played for the choir, was in the women’s groups, you name it. She babysat the kids of folks who, following in her footsteps, took membership classes at the church.
Grandma had three living daughters, losing a fourth at birth. She’d carried it to term but the little girl died almost at once, and she doesn’t know why. The doctor advised her not to see the baby. I was told by her that she still sometimes wonders what went wrong. Did the baby have gross deformities? Did the doctor want to prevent what is now called bonding? Grandpa saw her buried but Grandma wasn’t well enough to be there. But she lived to see great-great-grandchildren, and we have several five generation pictures taken.
The Depression was hard. Grandma had to keep the home while Grandpa struggled with his own auto garage. Sometimes folks paid in kind, potatoes, rabbits, eggs. She worked hard to keep the house up, the kids fed and clothed, doing a lot of sewing.
In the 1950’s Esther started teaching school again at the Lutheran school in Topeka. When teachers had to have a degree she went to college to get one, graduating in her late 50’s. While I was in fourth grade I looked at her astronomy textbook, and she took me outside and showed me all the constellations for the northern hemisphere… She showed me how to tell what time of the year it was by seeing where the Big Dipper is in the sky.
I was her oldest grandchild, child of her second daughter. Grandma was a rock. When I went through hard times she would listen and comfort me. Grandma was a “Family First” kind of person, putting others before herself. Former students never stopped writing to her and visiting her. The lives she has touched are too many to count, beginning back in those hard Depression days, when she and Grandpa would let friends who were even worse off sleep in one of their rooms.
Grandma told me once she didn’t believe in the concept of “the good old days” and that all she really misses is family and friends that have gone on before her. She says life is much more comfortable with indoor toilets, refrigerators, washers and dryers, vacuums, and especially air conditioners. After all, in the mid-1930’s, she told us, they had to sleep outside in the summers, it was so hot.
The above link is to a video taken when Grandma was 106, titled “The Amazing Mrs. Lietz” She was visited by the president of the Kansas district of her church, as she was the oldest member of the church in Kansas.
This link is to a newspaper article from a little over a year ago, about a birthday celebration for local centenarians.
Her 108th birthday would have been December 17th, 2012. Up until the last two or three months she was still happy and alert, and it hurt to see the change come.
Grandma, you are celebrating your new life in Heaven now, but oh I will miss you. Wait for me, and I will do my best to see you again someday.
Baker,
May her soul rest in peace!
Amazing story and links. You should be proud.
Edited the title for you as you asked, Baker.
And I’m sorry.
I’m glad you had your Grandma for such a long time. She sounds like she had a wonderful and interesting life. Wishing you and your family peace.
Baker, I’m sorry for your grandmother’s passing and thankful for your sharing a little bit of such an amazing woman with us.