The telegram was jammed into the letter slot in the front door of the old house we lived in for the summer on my first internship in Canada. Grandma’s funeral notice from my dad went unnoticed for two weeks because the mail slot was rusted shut on the inside. We always used the side door. Some kind folks had vacated their old home for our family of four for the summer. We never thought to check the mail slot.

My heart sank—Grandma Gianotti, a.k.a. Gustava (nee Pruki) gone! Out of the blue—and we missed the funeral. I loved that woman, her cookies, her blueberry-everythings (muffins, pancakes, you get the picture), the glint in her eye, and that warm, forever smile. She was the quintessential grandma kind of person. Gone! 1982, age 86. Lost.

Cherished memories are preserved in my mind (of course) and in my favorite picture of her, a cute but grainy black and white photo from her high school days, dated 1912. She was coyly posed with a basketball held against one hip with both hands. Her body was shifted impishly to the other hip, and she wore long gym pants (which were in vogue when it wasn’t proper for women to show their legs above the ankle). With her bobbed chestnut hair (which looked black in the photo) pulled back somehow, she had the look of a girl who would rather be playing the game than posing for a picture but had nonetheless quickly pulled together a charming pose, and probably darted off at the click of the shutter. Now she is gone.

I picture her in my mind’s eye being wooed by a young Jack and riding her Harley-Davidson motorcycle alongside him, paddling in the front of a canoe with him in the back, catching and cleaning fish, frying them over an open fire, making muffins for extended tripping into the BWCA wilderness, and smiling. Grandma. Gone.

I picture her sitting beside me on the piano bench, leafing through an old hymn book, asking me to play another old hymn of the faith. Her favorite? “I Come to the Garden Alone.” I played, she sang, and bespectacled Gramps hummed from behind his newspaper on the stuffed easy chair. Next up, “Amazing Grace.” The rugged outdoorsman, turn-his-hand-to-anything kind of guy had an intellectual and spiritual side.

Before one hymn was hardly finished, Grandma would grab the book and flip to another song, tilting her head back so she could read through her bifocals. Her scratchy “old-lady” voice was beautiful; she sang from the heart. After each song, she would quietly say, “That’s beautiful, isn’t it.” I believe the angels were singing along with us. Looking past her to the Queen Anne desk not far from the piano, I noticed the latest copy of “Our Daily Bread” opened to the current daily devotional for her reading of the day. But now, she was gone.

What was so notable about Grandma? True, her life was a bit unusual as she stretched the boundaries of the social norms of her day. No one will write a 500-page biography of her life. I can’t tell you of any missionary exploits, giving up all here to reach the lost around the world. She didn’t start any orphanages or write books or anything our world considers noteworthy. But hers was a life well lived. Though she didn’t talk about her faith much (few did in the early 1900s), she lived it. When I shared my conversion to Christ story with her, it was apparent that this was not an unfamiliar conversation for her. In a hushed, reverent tone, she whispered to me, “That was the Holy Spirit in your life.”

Gustava was a well-rounded, fun-loving, adventurous, and godly woman who lived a good and full life. Everyone loved her, and she was able to tame her husband, Jack (for the most part). A heart attack may have physically taken her away from this temporary, earthly existence, but God got her heart for eternity. Yes, hers was a worthwhile life, and it was well lived. She is not gone. No, she has just transitioned; she graduated to a new life; she was promoted to glory. I may have missed her funeral, but I will see her again as we stand together in the presence of the Lord. And if there won’t be Grandma’s blueberry muffins in heaven, there will be something far better!