I'll never forget how you made me feel

The person who I knew loved me most in the world was my Oma. My mother's mother. She passed when I was a freshmen in college. She never met my husband or my children. When I met my husband's grandmother I was elated, it was like I was given a second chance at having a grandmother. 

Kind words, spoken with a soft smile, were sprinkled throughout her cadence of English and Spanish while Wimbledon played in the background. When Xav and I welcomed our first son, I thought how blessed he was to be able to have so many generations of people who were thrilled about his birth. He had a great- grandmother, something I'd never experienced. She came the six hours south to meet him when he was just a few days old.

Arabella was a mother to five and had grandchildren in the double digits and great-grandchildren and still at her service, the alter boy wept. I know she treated him the same as her blood relations because she had done that for me. While we were only linked through marriage, she felt like family. I felt her support, her encouragement, and her prayers.

The last time I spoke with her was at her assisted living facility and it was like so many times before where, the entire family would visit with her and I would hang back, understanding my place. And it wasn't a negative thing it was just what my introverted sanctimonious self could handle. Like I said, having Arabella introduced into my life felt like an otherworldly gift because both my grandmothers had already passed and were much older by the time I was mature enough to see them as adults, who had lived rich, full lives long before I came on the scene. Being in a room with Bella felt special, so I'd bide my time. She would visit with her children and grandchildren and when everyone else had left on a motorcycle ride or went to visit another relative, Arabella and I would sit, (well, for a few minutes because she never liked being still similar to myself), or she would do chores and I would try and help, without causing too much of an inconvenience. And we would talk, just her and I. I would hungrily lap up her stories about Questa, Norbert, her kids, and how my husband behaved as a baby. We'd discuss sports, current events, and anything in between. When I published my first three books, she bought them all, even multiple copies to give to friends. She read my work and told others about it, always the supportive grandma, even to us "add-on" kids.

This person was sweet and stern and stubborn and ambitious and smart but mostly she was kind. She saw things that others missed and that included someone needing help. The town saw it in how her and her husband started a fire station after their house burned down, or opened the gas station with a full shop, or how she volunteered for the church renovation that took eight years. She would offer advice to quiet my restless son when we visited, and he was just four months old, and I was plagued with postpartum depression. And while it may have seemed bossy to others, to me it was exactly how I imagined my Oma being a great-grandmother. Each of them born into a time when babies were work and consistent formula's could treat their restlessness.

After her funeral, her daughter-in-law expressed her sincere gratefulness to Bella's children for sharing their mom with her. She said that Bella had raised her in so many ways and even though I met Arabella when I was 21 years old, she raised me too. She gave me back something that I had long missed, a grandmother. She gave my children a relationship with their great- grandmother, something that no one in my family has had in generations.

While my heart breaks for everyone who lost her, because she was something special; a woman who was a force of nature but more than anything else, she was a flame to this family. I am soothed in my sadness knowing that I got to spend time with her.