Beatrice Nell Taylor

Well, after 16 hours or so in the car, we got to AZ to be with Dad for the funeral. Our aim was definitely to put the fun back in funeral but I think even we were surprised. I learned so much about Grandma and I thought I'd share some with you guys. She was separated from her mother because of illness when Grandma was only 3 years old. She was sent to live in Mexico with some family and then shuffled to various homes in the coming years. Her mom passed away when she was only 8 and while being separated from her mom was hard for her, knowing she'd never see her mom again in this life must have been much harder. I learned that she was sent to live with her big sister and their family and her sister Grandma's hair for what sounded like probably the first time in her life. No one had ever done that with for her before, I don't think. She seemed like a sweet girl who'd been through a lot but still had an amzaing capacity to love. They told a story about Daddy and Sherry that I loved. When Sherry was 2, she decided to make the bathtub into a swimming hole. She filled the tub (how a 2 year old did that, I'll likely never know) and they got all excited. When Grandma walked in, she saw Sherry excitedly looking on and heard Daddy (who was 4 at the time) shout "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
It was fun for me to get a mental picture of dad as a mischevious kid. Another thing I thought was neat was that as a young mom, Grandma went out to San Diego and was a riveter for the planes that flew in WWII. And Grandpa then went out to paint the planes. I thought it was cool that they both worked in world war II like those ads that you see in museums and stuff. I think what struck me, however, were the ways that I am like Grandma. Probably there were lots of similarities between she and all of you but I only focused on mine (because I'm ego centric). During the viewing, I looked down and saw my hands were identical to hers. I sat there and listened as the eulogy went on and found I was amazed.
She loved to bake and I love to bake. She loved Banana Cream Pie best of any pie in the world...me too! She loved to read and her heart just broke when her eyes got so bad that she couldn't read anymore. I find as I get older, I become more and more of a fan of reading. She loved having company and baking for her guests. She was allergic to wheat and she mourned when she found she couldn't eat her favorite treats...and I feel her pain on that one. She adored her older siblings and looked up to them very much, and on a good day, I'm that sappy too. :)
Pictured above are Dad and Sherry with their cousins. The tallest is Dick Baird who was the cousin that Dad lived with after Grandma and Grandpa separated. He said he looked up to Dick a lot and it's not hard to see why. He is a gentleman in every sense of the word and you can feel goodness from him when you first shake his hand. It was uncanny how his mannerisms and Dad's mirrored one another. Everyone commented on it. Dale, me, Sherry, Ward, Jenny, Alicia, even Dar and Nolan. Dad says that he fully believes he probably copied Dick's mannerisms 50 years ago and though these two haven't seen one another in almost that many years, they stuck. It was neat to see. Dad was like a kid again.
Here's Dale and I with the cousins of this generation that were there. I'm so happy to have gone. Of course, I wasn't ever close to Grandma Vandewalker like most of you. But I was so amazed at the connections that we all have with her because we share a gene pool. She's a part of all of us and we're a part of her. I felt so grateful for all the things she gave to us, even if she couldn't give us time with her. She gave us Dad and Aunt Sherry...and so I guess that means she was a big part in giving us each other. So as sappy as it is, and you'd expect nothing less from me, I asked Dad's cousin McRay who gave the Eulogy to send us all a copy of Grandma's life history. It was such a neat story to hear and it made me feel like we're blessed to belong to 3 families, not just two (the Pratts, the Taylors who was Grandma's Family and the Lisonbees). Dad's cousins we met were cool. You guys would like them a lot. I hope you get to meet them.