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Column: One last trip

A short month ago, on a bright Sunday morning, I took a familiar drive north to the village of Walnut. Although I had spent parts of my summers around the area, I walked into a building that I hadn’t been in before – the Walnut Manor where my grandma had been living for the past two weeks.

I walked down the hall, found her room, and there she was, in a different place than usual but nonetheless anxiously awaiting my arrival as she always did. I walked in with my backpack slung over my shoulder, chock full with a cribbage board, playing cards, my computer, a few recent Scout papers I had written in and an apple strudel from Tanners.

We had roast beef, mashed potatoes and cherry pie for lunch and watched our favorite team, the Green Bay Packers, pull out a win over the Detroit Lions. During the football game, I got her to play cribbage; although she was a little tired and had trouble remembering some of the rules. She read some of my articles, and I showed her some of the computer projects I had created for class. But the part I enjoyed the most was just getting to talk to her about my life.

Being close to my grandparents was one of the biggest factors in my decision to come to Bradley. Growing up 900 miles away in Texas, my family and I could only visit Illinois once or twice a year, and though it doesn’t seem very grand, the farmland of central Illinois became my favorite place on earth because of the people I got to see when I visited. I didn’t get to visit very often, so I considered every moment I got to spend with my grandparents a blessing.

This past summer, my grandma had some health problems. At the start of this school year, she spent about two and a half weeks at OSF Saint Francis in Peoria, where the doctors found a mass near her kidneys. The mass turned out to be cancerous and unfortunately inoperable. That’s how we got to my visit that Sunday afternoon, a simple day with my grandma that turned out to be one of the most memorable days of my life.

What I didn’t know was when I leaned over to give her a soft hug, told her I loved her and walked out the door, it would be the last time I would ever get to do so. My grandma passed away just over a week later. Our last day together couldn’t have been more perfect. I’m glad I made that final trip when I did.

There are so many lessons I’ve learned from her over the years, but there’s a few that will always stick with me. One is to enjoy life’s simple treasures. So many times we get caught up in the stresses of life that we don’t sit back and look at the blessings we’re given each and every day. We opt to focus on how far we have left to go, rather than look at how far we’ve come. She always reminded me to keep an open mind and an open imagination.

Me and my grandmother were friends for a long time, and I’ll miss our time together more than I can say. But those who love us never really leave us.

 

Dedicated to Betty Ann Oberle

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