For Grandma Richards

This is the eulogy I delivered, through many tears, at my grandmother Roberta E. Richards’ funeral on February 23, 2022.

As we pored through old photos these past few days, two words emerged to describe my grandmother: constant presence. In almost every photograph of us kids behind a birthday cake, there was grandma, tucked off to the side holding matches in her hand and a look of doting joy on her face.

She rarely looked directly into the camera, but some of the best photos capture her looking in the direction of someone she adored, with a true, candid smile.

In reading one of the most well-worn books I own – Tiny Beautiful Things – by Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild which Grandma also read – Strayed writes painfully and sweetly about the loss of her own mother. She writes that our loved ones teach us things – yes in life, but also in their death.

For decades, my grandmother supported my development as an artist. She facilitated arts and crafts, supported me in my art classes, and showed up to my art shows. In my early twenties, she asked me to paint a streetlamp on the wall of her Wadsworth-themed bathroom. My first commission. Steadily through the following decade she slipped me checks and even bought the computer upon which I now do my digital illustration work.

Going through her belongings revealed a lifetime of her art – dating back to the very start with her “very first girrafe I ever drew.” She graduated to calligraphy, embroidery, colored pencils, and more. It wasn’t until the reflection of reading her obituary and sifting through all of her crafty pursuits that I connected the dots of where I come from. It was her, I realized. My gosh, it was her.

Another lesson I’m learning has been a group teaching effort. It’s about losing a child. In witnessing my grandmother in the aftermath of Uncle Scott’s untimely death, I began to learn how true a love is from a mother to a child.

Several years ago, my own mom shared a memory of a woman who’s passed way too young with that woman’s mother. The mother’s eyes softened, and she and my own mom declared how wonderful it is when folks bring up the names of their dead loved ones. Our instinct is often to avoid speaking their names for fear of prompting a wave of sadness. My mom and her friend agreed that it’s a relief when others bring their beloved into conversation, so they can laugh and tear up and reflect out loud on the ones who occupy their constant thoughts anyway.

Two years ago, when Viggo was but a sprouting bean in my belly, Bjarke called me with the terrible news that our close friends and neighbors had suddenly lost their six year-old son. I happened to be heading to Grandma’s house, and she was one of the first people I told. I wholeheartedly believe that it’s because of absorbing these lessons from Mom and Grandma that we can be good friends to them, walking with them through the unending grief.

From this understanding, it brings me great comfort to know that Grandma has been released from the unfathomable grief of losing a child, the weight of which she carried for 23 years.

The last lesson crystallizing in the wake of her death is a bit harder for me to reveal, as I don’t yet know what to do with it. In recent years, since I moved first across the country and then across the ocean, the sugar-coating on Grandma’s goodbyes after my visits began to dissolve. She started saying things like, “You’re too far away.” “Oh, I wish you lived closer.” and “I don’t see you enough.”

I’d wince and well with resentment before hardening my protective armor that anyone who’s lived far from home would surely recognize. It’s the armor we call upon to shield us from the aching sadness of living so far away. It numbs the sting of those goodbyes.

As I’d board planes pointed away from Ohio, I’d soothe myself with the promise of next time. But now that I sit with the knowledge that there are no more ‘next times’ I am beginning to understand that 80 years of life lends a clarity of perspective, that perhaps it’s only in drawing nearer to the certain end of life that one sees through the farce of time stretching out infinitely and with limitless possibility before us. I have to believe that it is from this reckoning with the hard truth of finite time that Grandma expressed her disdain for my leaving.

Now, I know she was right. It wasn’t enough time. It will never be enough time when it comes to the ones that we love.

So, what do we do now to honor the lessons Grandma taught us in life and those she’ll teach in her death? I think we take her with us – allow her to remain as constant a presence in her death as she was in her life. We can listen to learn the names of our plant and animal neighbors, because God knows, she knew all of them. We can put our pens and colored pencils to paper to make a thing of beauty. And we can invite her to continue to light the real or proverbial candles on our birthday cakes as we celebrate another year of life, for it was her who ignited us to life, and it is us who will carry her warmth forward.

Four generations during a COVID window visit, 2020. L to R: Grandma, Mom, me (Gina), and Viggo (9 months)

Grandma wedding day kiss — A radiant Roberta Richards (nee Buckey) on her wedding day, June 14, 1959. Grandpa Richards on far right.

Grandma Richards leaving the party with style and grace.

Thank you for reading and reflecting on Grandma’s full, vibrant life. You are very welcome to share this with anyone she knew. Her full obituary can be read here.

Roberta E. Richards

1940 - 2022