Good bye grandma...

Yesterday evening, I recieved the call that I knew was coming but wasn't ready to hear. My grandmother passed away. She was 80 + years old, and had lived through a lot. She was in Holland as a little girl when it was occupied by the Germans. She never did like the sound of sirens. She went back to the "old" country a number of years ago, and was saddened by the way things had changed. Where her childhood home was there is now a highway. She had a younger brother that she hardly ever talked about. Recently, I asked her if her parents ever tried to have another child after him, and she laughed at the question. "Na," she said, "my parents where trying to get a head in the world." But there was a ting of sadness that I heard in her voice, and saw in her eyes. She really was all alone these past few years. She took a boat to America, but her sweetheart, my granpa Jake was one of the first to fly from Holland to America. He had his nose broken by a German when he was a young man, for no other reason than the fact that the German could do it, and he couldn't fight back. (Not if he wanted to live anyway.) He never liked Germans after that. When she got to America she changed her name to Dorothy. In the "old country" it was spelled Dorjty. Or something close to that. There where moments in my life I really disliked her, but there where moments in my life that I looked to her for advice, and she helped me become the woman that I am today. Good bye Grandma Dorjty.