Josie Haas, beloved grandmother..........

My grandmother had the sweetest smile and the prettiest eyes.  When she smiled it was like every angel in Heaven was shining in her eyes.  They were the kindest eyes and when she looked at me and smiled it was like she looked deep into my soul and would always know what was there and it would always be good and kind because that is what she saw.  Oh, if I could have spent my lifetime in the shadow of that woman, so much would have been so different! I would never have had an impure thought or wanted anything but to go straight to Heaven and live there for eternity with my sweet, sweet grandma, Josie Haas.  How do I explain what happened next? 

How do I explain coming home that January day to find that Uncle Goll and Aunt Mabel had come and I did not live there anymore.  My great grandma Hatfield was being whisked off to Coldwater, Kansas, Grandma was in the Broadacre Nursing Home, and I now lived in Nickerson, Kansas.  Aunt Lola and Uncle Alvin would  "dispose of the property" because Grandma had fallen to yet another stroke.  How quickly my life had changed.  How completely and utterly devastating life can be for a 15 year old girl.

There was no time for the goodbyes we always need to say.  Grandma Hatfield patted me on the head, Aunt Mabel smiled at me and Aunt Lola looked at me with her blank stare.  Mother took my little box of clothes to the car and that chapter of my life was over.  No more Dean and Dale, or Janet, or Miss Ghormely.  Slam, finis, and so long Plevna, Kansas.  Two weeks later my little grandma with the very sweet smile was buried in a grave beside her dear husband.

It was several years later that Grandma Hatfield was buried at the age of 104 in Abbyville, Kansas.  Many years later, when my own dear mother went to her heavenly reward, my sister handed me a kind of long white box and explained that it should be mine because I was the only one who had any idea what it contained.  Inside, nestled on white tissue paper was a golden braid of hair.  It was the braid that was cut from my grandma's head the night they took her to the nursing home.  It would have been too much work to take care of her hair, so they just cut it off and gave it to mother.

All the grandma's and grandpa's, aunts and uncles and most of the cousins are gone now.  All the mothers and fathers, one of the sister's and the only brother I ever had are gone.  They are slowly taking their places in my memory bank, but the one who shall always remain at the pinnacle is my dear sweet grandma, Josie Haas.