A Tribute to My Grandma on the Occasion of Her 90th Birthday

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live a good life. Perhaps this preoccupation has to do with having children of my own now, but it is no longer sufficient to philosophize about the good life or critique others I feel don’t live good lives. I’m learning how urgent it is for me to be a wholly good human being right now.

What you have provided for me is a model of what it means to live well. What makes you great in my eyes is your constancy in selflessness. As you know, I am educated beyond my intelligence, and I am aware of various philosophers and their definitions of greatness. But surely the best definition is that provided by Jesus Himself: greatness is humble service, first of God, then of others.

You have served God in your marriage and in your home. You have never been ashamed of the notion that a woman’s value can be fully realized in caring for a hard-working husband and in faithfully raising children. You have lived the principle that the highest calling and the noblest glory of a woman is nurturing life. Wherever you have been, there has been joy and feasting and laughter and the spirit of home.

You have served God by the manner in which you have extended generosity to others over the years. In my college years, you took me in, made wonderful meals for me, and supported even my immature efforts at sketch comedy, which is certainly confirmation of your saintly perseverance. More importantly, your gracious care energized my ability to complete my first two years of college. And I know that your emotional and monetary support enclosed many members of your family in times of need.

You have served God by the manner in which you entertain guests, your selflessness tangibly expressed in excessive volumes of goulash, innumerable Thanksgiving dinner masterpieces, fried fish and peach cobbler.

You have served God by your commitment to His Church. To this day, many of my fondest memories of childhood involve your lessons in Sunday school at Evangel Temple. Of course I don’t remember the lessons, but that does not diminish their importance in my development and in the development of so many other children privileged to sit under your guidance. Please know that your thankless and faithful service has resulted in the cultivation of souls. Anyone can build a thing, but you have been instrumental in the building of people.

You have lived life slowly enough to absorb its detail, to understand and support your loved ones, and you have stopped frequently enough in the flow of daily life to listen to the voice of God.

You have graciously endured much, including thankless grandchildren like me, the poverty of the great depression, cancer and the loneliness that comes with outliving your friends. But you have emerged not merely a good and praiseworthy woman, but a living testament to the reality of God in the world, a true, deep and authentic Christian, a righteous woman!

I know what you wanted to teach us all; that our greatest wealth and greatest achievements in this brief life involve our relationships, first with God, then with family and then with the world. Most in our age deliberately attend to various professional relationships with the world, and after that is secured we perhaps make time for family and God. I pledge to you that my family will seek to honor God by the manner in which we conduct our family life, as you have always done. The greatest honor we can give you is to pattern our lives after the legacy of love, desire for truth and genuine faith you have plainly exemplified.

When I look into the innocent eyes of my twins, or when I see Trinity’s unbounded joy, I think of the simple carefree days of my own childhood, spent with you and grandpa. It is in those moments that I learned that life is not a matter of duration but of quality; that what counts is paying attention to what matters, being wholly present in the moment and that the preservation of moments is not nearly as important as the preservation of character. Let me put it this way: I want to be for my children and grandchildren what you have been for me, a source of noble humanity. Streams do not rise higher than their source, but your love for your grandkids flowed from the reservoir of God’s love for you.

I’m so proud that you are my grandmother; that my children are the living legacy of so luminous a woman, who in the winter of her years continues to show the way for future generations. It is a poor recompense—it is no recompense—to offer my profuse thanks for all you have done and all you have been to me. Because of you I am a truly rich man; rich in everything that matters. But I say thanks, and I join others on this occasion in applauding you, not for the duration of your years, but for the depth of your soul.

Your deeply grateful and deeply honored grandson,

Bo