Sunday, August 19, 2007

Remembering Grandma


I recently returned to the mountains where I was born and raised to remember a hell of a lady that I knew as Grandma. Grandma died in April at the age of 88, but requested that in lieu of a funeral, her family and friends gather on her birthday and remember her. It was a casual event and I was reunited with many people I have not seen for many years. Her six children are pictured to the left - twins Larry and Linda, Roxy, Ed (Ron), Chet and Bonnye.

Grandma's ashes were committed to Earth next to Grandpa in Paradise Valley, Montana. Afterwards, at a picnic in Sacajawea Park in Livingston, Montana, family and friends looked through a box of photos that Grandma had taken and collected throughout the years. The one below sums up my Grandmother in many ways.

More than a Grandma, Ruth DeYoung was a friend and adventurer to me. We were close, as I was her first grandson. She cheated at pool, built her own cabin and loved the color red so much that her entire kitchen and bathroom were filled with it. She gave me my first ride on a motorcycle, tied her toboggan onto the back of her Buick for rides through town, raised rabbits that we killed and ate and gave me the first issue of Playboy I ever saw with someone's permission.

Grandma was a unique spirit and made the World she travelled in a better place to be.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the troublemakers, the round pegs in
the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of
rules, and they have little use for the status quo.

You can quote them,
disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is
ignore them, because they change things – they push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy…because the people who are crazy enough to
think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

- Steve Jobs --1997