My maternal grandmother was very special to me. She was a tough woman who didn’t take any junk from anyone, was as honest as anyone I’ve every known and she treated me like an adult even as a young teenager. I really appreciated that. She told me when she thought I was wrong, and when she thought I was right and my folks were wrong. I don’t know that my parents appreciated that.
She died in 1976 after 45 years of heavy smoking. She was born on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, 1908, and it always gave the holiday, as nice as it already was, a lift for me. For a long time now, I have made a toast each Thanksgiving to her, to her life as she led it on her owns terms and to the bond we shared as grandmother and grandson.
She taught me many lessons in life, often just by example. She was poor, but she owned a home that her siblings lent her the money to buy back during the Great Depression. While I was growing up, she took in homeless people, fed them and made sure they were warm and had a bed to sleep in. In exchange, for she was no coddler, she expected them to help with chores (my grandfather had long passed), to stay sober and to look for work to get their lives back together.
She was very religious and strongly believed that helping those in need was God’s most important work. She prayed every evening, but never for anything for herself. She prayed for her loved ones, her family, for her friends and for the world. She also taught me to stand up for myself, to never let anything break me, to be direct, to work hard and to never ever judge anyone by their race, religion or any basis other than their actions. She taught me respect.
Most of us engage in certain traditions, but few actually start one. About 15 years ago, I decided to start a family tradition to honor my grandmother. I took passages from American Indian prayers and put them together to create my own prayer, a book of prayer, each page giving thanks in a new way, a family prayer of thanks. I reproduced it so each person at our Thanksgiving table had a copy and could read a part of the prayer. We usually have 12 to 15 people, family and friends, sometimes more, for dinner each year. Every page had a passage to be read along with a graphic representing the particular message.
This year, we will again read from the book of prayer in memory of my grandmother on her birthday, Thanksgiving Day. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for teaching me right from wrong, to be grateful for what I have, for my blessings, to care for others and for never pretending to be perfect for we are all a work in progress. We love and miss you, Gram.
Happy birthday, and Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
— Bruce M. Hardina is the publisher of the Journal Tribune, a singer-songwriter, a philosopher, a student of life and the human experience, a columnist, an entrepreneur and a family man. To comment on his musings, email bhardina@journaltribune.com or mail a note to Journal Tribune, Attn: Bruce Hardina, 457 Alfred St., Biddeford, ME 04005.
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