Home early...

"We make plans, and God makes others"

Never was this saying driven home to me more than this weekend. I received the news Friday that my beloved Grandma passed away sometime between midnight and 8am. I'm very connected to my Grandma and talked to her almost as often as I do my parents. She is a very central and important part of our family, and an amazing person. So this news was hard for me. It was certainly unexpected.

Camila and I talked about it, and I made the difficult decision to come home for the funeral. Difficult because it will probably be too expensive for me to return to Brazil to spend Christmas and the New Year with my wife. We prayed about it together, and felt that I should go home. When my Grandpa Woodhouse passed away in 2000, I wasn't there for my family, my Father, or myself, and it's something I still regret. I didn't want to feel that way about my Grandma's funeral, so I hopped on a plane Friday night and came home.

Like I said, my Grandma is amazing! She leaves behind a husband who loves her deeply, a legecy of 6 children (5 living), 18 grandchildren, and 18 great grandchildren, all of whom know and love her. She was smart (seems weird to use "was") witty, alert, and had a quick witted sense of humor. She could keep up with my humor and throw it back at me. She loved to laugh, and we loved to watch when she did - her whole face would become wrinkles and smile. She mingled with her great grandkids as easily as she did with adults. She always called me her "angel-baby" (I called her "gramma-ma").








Grandma is of irish decent. Her mother was a strong-willed feminist, and while Grandma didn't carry forward the feminist torch, she was also strong-willed and outspoken. It seems to run in my family that the women are like that. It's the reason I'm attracted to strong women. Look at my wife! No "timid" there.




It's such a funny thing now, but a big part of her legacy was her banana bread. She was F-A-M-O-U-S for it. Among the family anyway. Because I was her angel-baby, she only made it for me. And when she did, she would make me between 15-20 loaves. Trust me, that's only a 3-month supply. You'd understand if you ever tasted it. She would, to everyone else's chagrin, only make a few extra loaves. So there were always fights for the stuff, with my Dad, Jade, and uncle Roger being the biggest contenders (neener-neener guys!). I eventually set up a UPS account specifically so Grandma could ship her banana bread to me because I couldn't trust it in the hands of anyone else. Camila wanted to spend time learning the recipe, but unfortunately that was lost with Grandma, because I don't think she ever taught it to anyone.

But I suppose that even if someone could make better banana bread than Grandma's, it wouldn't be better.

Gramma-ma, we love you and will always miss you! You are a cherished soul and live on through all of us. Farewell...

(A wedding pic, 1947)


(Still going strong 60 years later...)