She would have been 101 years old today. She died on November 10, 2001 and boy, was she ready to go!! She had her funeral planned and would always tell us "When I die, you'll be sorry for how you've acted." She was the QUEEN of guilt trips. Grandma Austin was my Mom's Mom. She was 4o yrs old when she had my mother. She had only been married a few years prior because she spent all her time taking care of her sick Mother. My Grandma earned money to go to college but had to spend the money on the family instead since her father had been injured and couldn't work. Grandma spent her whole life taking care of others first. After her 2nd husband died, Grandma came to live with us. I remember when my parents would go out, if we were fighting with each other, Grandma would put on her coat, grab a suitcase and threaten to leave. My brothers and I would smile and say "See ya Grandma!" But my little sisters would cry and my older sister would sing "Love One Another" to remind us we should behave. Grandma was also famous for her Jell-O surprise. It was deemed "DuRell-O and we were pretty sure one day we were going to find her false teeth in it or something. You never knew what she put in there! Grandma lived to serve her family and friends and I know she's still serving where she's at.
*************EDIT****************
I forgot to share this funny thing about Grandma. Grandma was totally convinced that any day would be "the day" when she was going to die. I mentioned she had her funeral planned. Well, she also was a sucker for "great deals" especially on funeral stuff. She bought her burial plot and, since her time was going to come so quickly (or so she thought), she also bought her casket. She had been keeping it in her home in Logan, Utah even though she was living in a retirement home in Sugar House, Utah. When it came time to sell her house in Logan, she didn't have a place to store the casket. My dad was married to Cari at the time. Cari had 8 sons and all of them had a GREAT sense of humor. Dad and Cari and the boys decided to come up with a top 10 list of things to do with the casket. I was not living at home at this time so I heard everything 2nd hand. I do remember a few of their ideas though. One plan was to make it a guest bed in the basement. Another plan was to dig a hole in the backyard and bury it late at night by the light of a flashlight and act very sneaky. Then, they would make sure that one of the boys was not seen for a few days and see how long it took neighbors to wonder what happened! :) Ah, funny times. Grandma lived much longer than she ever wanted to. Near the end of her life, she got breast cancer. It was the only thing that could kill Grandma. She was so healthy! It must be due to that miraculous "green drink" she had! She was sure she was going to cure Mom's cancer with that stuff. Maybe it worked for her. I don't know.
7 comments:
what a wonderful tribute to your grandmother. happy birthday to her!
Aprilyn, I loved reading about your grandma. I'm sorry, she couldn't have been the Queen of Guilt Trips, because my grandma was. But she was more subtle than your grandma. :-)
I hope you have the "live long and healthy" gene.
Loved the casket stories! What a hoot.
My grandma also used to tell us that there were starving kids in Ethiopia so we couldn't waste our food. We volunteered to mail our food we didn't like to those starving kids. :)
She used to say "If you keep eating that much sugar on your cereal, you're going to get Sugar Diabetes!" I would put a little extra on my cereal when she said that.
The worst guilt trip she ever put on any of us was after our Mom died. My youngest sister was 9 at the time and Grandma told her it was our fault (the kids in the family) that Mom died because we argued with each other too much and didn't have enough faith. My Dad was pretty mad when he found out she had told my sister that. Needless to say, Grandma was invited to go back to living in her apartment again after that. She had been staying with us at the very end so she could be there when Mom died.
I LOVED this post. What a funny grandma, saying all those guilt-inducing things. And the Jell-O? Do you have her recipe--minus the teeth?
The casket story is too funny. I should tell the story of buying Phil's mom's casket on my blog someday. It is funny too.
She just made Jell-O and added various fruits and vegetables to it. Mostly it was carrots but sometimes we didn't know what was in it and she couldn't remember. Frightening, really. We would take some of her "DuRell-O" on our plate and smear it around so it looked like we ate it. I'm so sneaky eh?
Oh, and I never even told how she would do the dishes for us! If it was my turn to do the dishes, (we weren't allowed to use the dishwasher because Dad said it didn't clean stuff good enough), I would just say I had to go to the bathroom and made sure I stayed in there reading a book for a while. When I got back, Grandma had finished the dishes. Heehee. :) Worked every time!
Your grandma sounds hilarious. So do those 8 step brothers you have!
The boys were a hoot. They are not my step-brothers anymore though. Sorry, I wasn't clear on that one. My Dad is married again though. I used to still keep in touch with the mom of those 8 boys but I haven't talked to her in forever.
Post a Comment