Grandma would wake Jake and me up every morning and we would get to eat the biggest breakfast we ever saw in our life. She would take us to the barn and we had to get the eggs from underneath the chickens. Grandma said if they sat on the eggs too long they would become hardboiled eggs, so we got the eggs first. Then we fed the cats in the barn, the pigs in the pigpen, the horses in the corral and the goats that were fenced in on the other side of the barn. It was a lot of work but Grandma said the sooner we fed the animals the sooner we could play and have some fun. She had an old tire that hung from a tree to swing on and a tree cabin in a maple tree in the backyard. Jake and I loved the tree cabin and at noon she would ring a bell and we would send the bucket down tied to a rope to the ground and she would put our lunch in there. On hot summer days if all the chores were done she would take us to the pond and let us swim off the dock. Grandma would laugh when we jumped in doing cannonballs. It would splash her everywhere and she still found it funny. Mom and dad came back and we spend the next week helping out around the farm, repairing stairs and windows and going to the little town that had an ice cream parlor for our favorite treats.
Then the time would come we had to go back home to the city. School would start, then Halloween, Thanksgiving break and Christmas Day. It seemed that from January to June took forever to get here but the last day of school was only 3 days away. Jake and I couldn’t wait. We ran off the bus and into the house and found mom sitting at the table crying. I asked her if she was sick. She told me then that she had just found out that Grandma had passed away that morning. I didn’t quite understand what she meant by passed away. Jake ran to his room crying and dad got home and came in and hugged mom. I asked him if that meant that Grandma went away and he told me she had died and went to be with her Heavenly Father. I told him I didn’t mind if we didn’t go to the farm this year we could go see her Father too. Dad got down on his knees and put his arm around me and explained that Heavenly Father was not her dad but the Lord in Heaven. I was so confused. I told him she couldn’t go up to Heaven when I needed her down here with me. What about the farm? Who would take care of all the chickens, cats, pigs, horses and sheep? Who would feed them and clean the barn? He said we would have to go there this year and clean out the house and get it ready to sale. I ran from the room and went upstairs to hear my brother crying. I locked myself in the bathroom to get away from everybody. I lay in the tub with my eyes closed asking Grandma why she would leave me. I fell asleep crying to myself. I heard knocking at a door and woke up to dad telling me to unlock the door. I got up and unlocked the door. He took me to my room and pulled back the covers and tucked me in.
Mom, Dad, Jake and I left the next morning to go to Grandma’s. When we got there we saw a lot of cars in the driveway. I went to the barn to see the animals while mom and dad went and talked to the neighbors that had come to say how sorry they were that Grandma had died. We went to church the next day and they said a whole bunch of nice things about Grandma then we followed a big black car to the gravesite where Grandpa was and watched while they lowered the casket with Grandma in the ground. It was the saddest day of my life. I asked mom later if we could just live here forever and not go back to the city. She said that her and dads jobs were in the city and they had to work to pay for everything. I went to bed that night thinking of how much my life would change now that Grandma had gone to Heaven. I got out of bed and knelt down beside it and decided I would talk to Grandma. I prayed and asked the Lord to tell her I would miss her but never forget her. I crawled into bed and slept the best I had ever slept that night. We spent the next week putting all of Grandma’s things into boxes and hauling a lot of it to the local church. They were going to give things to families who didn’t have much. I thought Grandma would like to know she was helping someone else. The neighbors were gong to tend to the animals and yard work until they found someone to buy the house.
The years have past and I am now 21 years old and I can still remember that farm. The easy way of life and comfort you felt when you were there. I have yet to find that feeling in any home I have been in or made on my own. I know though that someday I will find that place and when I do, I hope to make it the kind of home Grandma had made for Jake and me.