My Great Gram

My great grandmother, Mary Thompson, turned 90 the day I got married. She raised four boys in a tiny adorable house in New Jersey and she lived here until she died.

She loved her family, her four boys, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren and her great great grandchildren, and we were blessed to know her.

She sent me birthday cards with five dollars tucked inside every year for my entire life. She would make me and my cousins matching presents, that differed only in color.

She loved to read and whenever we visited she would send me home with a bag full of books, which to my book-loving soul always felt like Christmas.

She was Catholic and could quote the Old Latin Mass and she laughed at my mom when my mom called to ask her what she thought of the recent changes to the liturgy, saying "I can still say them Latin so they can change them however they want."

Once we sent her a Bible cover for her birthday, but she sent it back saying she didn't need it because her priest told her everything she needed to know about the Bible, so when I went to Israel, I got smart and sent her a wooden rosary I found in Bethlehem instead.

When I finally remembered to mail it out, she sent me the sweetest thank you note written in the most beautiful sweeping cursive. It was the kind of note people don't write anymore, the kind of note that gets lost in a sea of text messages and shorthand.

I remember when I was young I saw a picture of her on her wedding day in her back room and I remember looking at and thinking she looked just like my mom, which maybe meant I looked like a little bit like her too.

I hope that's true, because even at 92 she was beautiful, inside and out.