LEGACY

She died at 80 when I was eleven years old, yet despite our limited contact, I remember with gratitude my great grandmother's spiritual legacy. Born in Norway, as a child she immigrated to America with her parents. But her mother died soon after coming to America. Her father remarried, then he died. His widow remarried, meaning my great grandmother was raised by double stepparents. More sorrow would come. She was married at 19 to another of Norwegian heritage, but he died at 33 after they had four daughters together—my grandmother being the oldest. She remarried and had four more children. Her first name was Rachel (born “Ragnild” in Norway) but we always knew her as “Great Grandma Neely,” the surname of her second husband.

One of my mother's six brothers was a genealogy buff, and before his death produced a 579-page family history—two inches thick—of photos and charts. That's where I found Great Grandma Neely's wedding photo and put together the pieces of her two marriages and perseverance in times when medical care was inadequate and people died young. When she died at 80, that was old.

She spent her “very senior” years visiting her special relatives. That included my mother, who would have been her first grandchild. My mother was the oldest of nine born to great grandma's firstborn and an impoverished Norwegian farmer. When my mother graduated high school, she had no future except to help care for her parents' large, needy family. Great Grandma wanted better for her. By now in her second marriage, and more financially able, she sent money for my mother to travel from eastern Montana to the Longview-Kelso area to live with her. She said she'd make sure my mother got an education to prepare for a life work. I'm not sure what courses my mother took that year at the local junior college, but in attending church she found her true vocation as wife to a young man from Missoula, Mont.

Back to those “Great Grandma” visits. I think, as the youngest, that I gave up my twin bed for Grandma Neely and slept on the couch. Days, she'd sit in my dad's favorite rocker, crochet hook busy when she wasn't reading her black leather Bible or snoozing. For years in our shower we had a crocheted “soap bag” she made. It allowed slivers of soap to be saved and used until they'd entirely melted away. But that wasn't what I remember most.

I was about fifth grade, when little “autograph books” were the rage. About 4x6”, they had colored pages on which your friends were to write their names and silly ditties, like “When you get old and think you're sweet, take off your shoes and smell your feet.” When I asked her to sign my autograph book, she graciously took it with a smile, then penned something I never anticipated:

I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth. --3 John 4 –Great Grandma Neely

I wish I still had that book, but in the purging of life and moves, I don't. But I do have another memento of her faith life: the tiny black pocket New Testament she gave me. I keep it by my recliner with other Bible materials, sometimes just to read favorite passages in the King James cadences. And when I do, I remember this bilingual, godly great grandmother, no stranger to sorrow and loss, who kept the embers of faith fresh through prayer and Bible study.

I was told that in her last days, dying from strokes at age 80, she struggled with words to tell a granddaughter caring for her that angels were just over the river, ready for her. And she was ready for them. As I have grown older, I wonder about the legacy I will have left when I die. Yes, I've had the privilege of writing books and articles, and of speaking to various groups. I raised two children to responsible adulthood (with the help of their remarkable dad). But what will really count, in the end, is whether I have left the legacy of children who “walk in truth.” I pray that will be so.