A BEGINNING

She would be 103 years old today.

February 18, 1915.  Amazing.

She was there the day I was born.  The mother of my mother.  One who I always loved to learn from.  To please.  It gave me such joy to make her proud of me...

And I love her.

She taught me to make a house a home--just as she taught my mother.  She taught me by her actions that cleanliness truly was next to Godliness.  

She taught me the lovely, quiet arts of knitting, crocheting, needlework--and I loved sitting next to her as she worked on a project of her own--it was never too much to stop her work and correct my fumbling, young fingers.

She was also one of the first ones who deeply instilled in my heart the love of family history.

She was rather immortal to me--such a presence in my life.

And then, one day, a phone call.  The voice of my Uncle Glenn, her son.  "Mom and I have been talking about her funeral.  She would like you to give her life story."  Nothing I wanted to think about.  I knew she was aging, fading--but planning her own funeral?  I hated the very thought of it!

But, not too long after that call, I was standing at the pulpit during her service; sharing with the overflowing chapel the life of this glorious woman.  My grandmother.

Velda Ellen Stapley Ostlund.

How do you encapsulate a living, breathing life to a series of letters and keystrokes?  You can't do it justice--but you can try.  And so I will.

This is a first of what I hope to be infinitely many attempts to capture the lives of those I love.  Some I have seen and loved and hugged and touched in this life, some I have not--but I know them and love them just the same.  Some were born in our century--some were born far centuries back.

I will try to be their voice.  I will try to speak to you for them.

I will try to somehow capture their stories for our family right here on these pages.  Hopefully we can feel of their love for us together as we do so--because their love for us is so very real.  I have felt it--and I know that you have, too.

My hope is that you will let me know which of our ancestors you'd like to know more about, and I will tell you their stories, share their pictures--anything I can--so that we can get to know them and love them more--together.

I chose the title for this blog from Malachi 4:5-6:
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

 "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

This turning is a real thing, my friends.  It is oh, so very real!  I have felt it too many times to doubt it.  When our hearts and thoughts are turned to them, theirs are turned to us.  The veil can be very, very thin when it needs to be.

But for this first story, I will keep it brief.  A birthday love letter to Velda from my heart to hers.   I will share one very special moment I had with her a few months after she passed away...

Velda--Grammie, as most of us called her--since the very first I can remember, would sign her letters & cards to her loved ones with as many XOXOXOXOXOXO's as they were old.  I loved this.  Sometimes I would count them with great joy, when I was young--making sure she didn't miss any!  As I grew older, my love for those X's and O's intensified as I saw them being painstakingly written by older, wrinkled but loving hands.  The letters shaky, but constant.  The intent the same...

We'll talk more about her death another day.  But on this one occasion-- about 4 months after she died--I woke up in the middle of the night.  Nothing had jostled me, no noises, no needs to get out of bed.  And so I just laid there........

And suddenly, running through my mind was this thought/image--almost audible.  Almost physical:

"XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO"

It was so present--so odd.  I kind of laughed quietly and wondered why.  And then it hit me. 

 It was early in the morning of February 18, 2002.  Velda's birthday.  I had been thinking of her so much the day before.  And I felt this was her loving, sweet message back that she was also thinking of me.  That she loved me.  That she was--in every way--still HER.

I smiled.  My eyes were a little teary.  And I said, in an audible whisper; "I love you, too, Grammie."

I very strongly felt that she heard me.  I smiled again.

And I fell asleep.

Thank-you, my dearest Malinda, for setting my feet on this path.  You were right--it needs to happen.  And here we go.....

I love you all.

Julie

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO