While you may not be here to help us celebrate, today we honor your dedication and courage in being our mother, grandmother and great grandmother. With four children, twelve grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren you have an impressive group of heirs who inherit so much more than material things. Thank you for all the hours you spent encouraging us in our endeavors and guiding us in our life choices.
This past week in going through some of your collections your scent came forth and filled me with sweet memories. In the process of viewing your thirty picture albums and putting the pictures in a safer type of albums, there was great joy in viewing the few short years that they cover. It is apparent that the earlier years of pictures were divided up amongst our four individual albums, which we were able to scan at the time that they were put together. Now there is a need to scan and share the albums which cover the years 1960 to 1982. There are more pictures to add to these albums, which you became distracted from doing when our father was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
There are now three albums of family events including our trip to Florida in 1974, one album of hikes and state wide trips to Mt. Hood, Ghost Towns, and other beautiful spots in our great state of Oregon. Your trip of a lifetime to Arizona and Utah to visit the ancient Indian settlements there is well recorded in its own album. Now all of those pictures are safely mounted so others can spend time enjoying their memories. Still to go are six albums from various trips to Hawaii. There are a few collections of more recent trips taken to Canada and other places. How you thrilled in seeing the beautiful places of this world, and the flowers and animals that lived there.
For today we are most grateful to not be going to court on this day. Our plans are to go out and do fun things in your memory. We spent days and long hours cleaning up your home in preparation of putting it up for sale. You were able to spend thirty-four years living in the home in Carver that you and our father built out of hard work and determination. Most of us were living on our own, so this was to be your retirement home. When our father passed away eight years later you became determined to leave this home as a heritage to your children. It is such a lovely place, and we are grateful that you lived out your life there. Our more fond memories are of the home we all shared on Roselawn Street in Portland, where we moved to in 1957. The twenty-three years you lived there are so full of wonderful memories. No matter where you lived you created a loving environment for our family.
The serendipity moments flooded in as the pictures of the albums bring back those fond memories. Seeing your precious china and silverware displayed in your apartment in Linnton when you were newly married demonstrates the great value you placed on the collections you acquired. Growing up in the Depression years and losing your home, moving to Oregon with what could be packed in the car, created in you a deep appreciation for the work required to obtain such collections. Your twenty-five Barbie dolls for the granddaughters to play with and the other twenty-four still in boxes are now shared by your family. The fifty porcelain dolls we can only remember in pictures, but they were very a significant part of your life.
Your art work, tole painting, oil paintings, painted saw blades, pictures, all capture the love of creating new things. All of the painted Christmas houses, many with our names on them, are also only memories. The bag with your crocheting and knitting work, the clothes you made for the dolls reflect the hours spent making gifts for other people. Your sewing machine on which you and your daughters created so many things truly served us well. The hours you spent ironing for our family and others have unfortunately not created a love for ironing in me. How you loved golfing and being outdoors with nature, especially the birds and deer. Your cats and dogs over the years brought such companionship and comfort. Then there were the birds that you raised and at times sold the babies. There was never a dull moment in your life.
You watched your favorite TV shows like Lawrence Welk, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Dancing with the Stars, Gray's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, the nightly newscast and sports including basketball, football and golf. The collection of books of every variety and many magazines that you subscribed to were read after you read the daily newspaper. It was fun sharing these things with you as we pondered the events of this world. In the last few years the world changes seemed to bother you more and it was hard to understand why certain things were occurring.
We talked almost daily about so many things and it is wonderful to have shared in those conversations. When you started giving things to me it is now a sign that you were preparing for what would soon occur. Thank you so much for ensuring that we knew of the things most important to you and what you wanted us to have. While you are not physically here to celebrate this special day with us we can look back on pictures of previous birthdays and events to remind us of your sweet spirit and pray that you now enjoy the most blessed peace of all.
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