To know my grandmother was to know all of this and then some.

The Foundation

Whether you were a third cousin, an old customer from the Cafe, a priest, or someone she’d just met, her door was always open. The card table always had room for one more chair and the fig cookies never seemed to run out.

She had the gift of gathering people, and no matter how many came, she had a way of making each person feel as though they were the one she had been waiting to see.

She started every morning with a crossword puzzle and a cup of coffee. She loved to sing, laugh, and reminisce. It didn’t matter if she was sitting on the beach in Navarre or watching a thunderstorm through her living room window, she would always note the goodness of God in his creation.

She went to Mass every day and prayed the rosary every night. She put all of her kids through Catholic schools, even if it meant going out and selling phone books to cover the cost of tuition. When asked to share her best advice for life, she never hesitated: “Have more kids than you can afford."

As the oldest of five, mother to five, and grandmother to eight, she was our living example of this.

Her life was simple on the surface, but rich and full in every way that mattered.

It reminds me a lot of the Saint Augustine line:

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance, to seek him the greatest adventure, to find him the greatest human achievement.”

It was like she knew this instinctively.

She was always sharing it with us if we were paying attention. Sometimes with her words. Like when she would tell us that, “The Blessed Mother said to pray the rosary every day.” But most of the time by her example.

I knew she was devout. I knew there was something different about her. But it wasn’t until the end of her life that it all came together.

The Source

On April 6th, the night before her 90th birthday, we went to see her.

The dementia had taken a toll and moments of clarity were few and far between. After about an hour, we went through her nighttime routine and helped her into bed. Nights were always hardest. She couldn’t walk anymore, was in constant pain, and needed around-the-clock care to be comfortable.

Once she finally settled in, we prayed a Divine Mercy Chaplet, and a few minutes later, she drifted off. We thought she was asleep for the night so we got ready to leave.

Just as we were about to go, she opened her eyes and called out.

Her voice was clear.

She wanted Jesus.

She wanted the Eucharist.

The dementia had taken nearly everything. But what it could never touch was her desire for the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus.

In that moment, everything I knew about her made perfect sense.

On April 28th she received Holy Communion again. By then, she couldn’t speak or swallow. The Eucharist would be her only food for the last fourteen days of her life.

One of the hospice nurses said she’d never seen a woman with a stronger will to live. If only she knew the Source.

I was lucky enough to be with her almost every day after that. I saw dozens of people pull up chairs next to her bed. Some shared stories. Others begged her to stay. But every one of them thanked her, prayed for her, and told her how much they loved her.

On May 12th, she took her last breath and the heart of our family went to be with Jesus.

The Invitation

Seeing it all happen in real time opened my eyes in a way that I don’t think anything else could have. To watch someone die is to see everything stripped away until all that remains is the undeniable reality of our need for God.

Because apart from him, there is no life in us.

When choosing the Gospel reading for her funeral Mass, we knew it had to come from the Bread of Life Discourse for this reason.

John 6:53-56

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

Father Eric said it best in his homily. The church wasn’t full for her funeral because she was Italian, or because she ran a Cafe for 35 years. The full church was the fruit. The fruit of a woman who spent ninety years in real communion with God.

What could easily be mistaken for personality, and she had the best of it, was actually the overflow of a life fixed on Jesus, on the Source and Summit. It was decades of daily devotion that cultivated an enthusiasm that could not be contained.

Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos, literally meaning God within. And that she absolutely had.

I like to think of the fruit of her life as an open invitation. An open invitation to place Jesus at the center. To devote our lives to being transformed by the Eucharist. To be so connected to God that when everything else falls away our hearts know exactly where to turn.

Because that is what we saw in her.

Thank you, Grandmother, for being our matriarch and greatest example. Thank you, God, for the gift of her life in mine, and for the promise of eternal life in you.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Amen.