Great Grandma

As I write this we are driving 65 mph on 95 in Northern VA.The funeral was today and we said a tearful farewell to Great Grandma. What an amazing woman she was. At the age of 17 she and her father left their home in Italy to start a new life in New York. A whole year passed before her mother and younger sister could join them in America. The man who cut her hair was actually from the same part of Italy. They fell in love, married and raised 4 children (Mike's father is their oldest son). Her barber husband passed away in 1986, and she'd been waiting a long time to join him. Great Grandma was a true inspiration to many. Her faith and her family were the most important things to her. She attended Mass daily and had friends who would drive her. A few weeks ago she'd spent some time in the hospital, and as soon as she was released she called her friends to pick her up for church going as far as lying and saying she had permission to go (in reality she really should've been resting and taking it easy). When her daughter, Mike's Aunt Lucy, cleaned out her pocket book this week she found eight sets of rosary beads! We proudly have one of them hanging from our rearview mirror right now. Four years ago we drove north for the big celebration of Great Grandma's 90th birthday. The decorations ( "theme") were pansies--her favorite flower. Yeaterday we were out looking for flowers for the funeral and amazingly found pansies to bring...fall in the north is not a popular time for pansies. We were even able to find a nice decorative basket to put them in. On the card we said, "Rest in Peace Grandma, you are our guardian angel."