Like many of you, the day I was born, I had four grandparents to welcome me into this world. Four individuals, that many years prior to my arrival, had become two couples. Two couples that started as couples do…they fell in love. Love…the beginning of many stories and many lives. So it goes.

My Grandma Helen, the last of those four grandparents that welcomed me into this world, was nearing the end of her time in this world, so I ventured home to say goodbye. With morphine easing the pain of 92-years of living, she silently peered up at me from her hospital bed, as I held her hand and told her that I loved her. About six hours later word came that she had died peacefully. Dying, just as she had lived…on her terms.

The youngest of her children, Lonny, was at her side while she took her final breath around 3:00am on November 10th. Her children always took good care of their mother, something she often expressed appreciation for. They also liked to rile her up, but she appreciated that too.

Helen Elizabeth Kraft was born December 20th, 1929 in Selz North Dakota. On July 23rd 1949 she married Fritz Ellis, in Parshall North Dakota, and of this union, nine children, five boys and four girls, were born.

Standing by my Grandma’s bed, holding her soft warm hand, as she breathed softly in a quiet calm state of irreversible bodily decline, after so many years of perpetual motion, I pondered her life.

Her life. Her husband died June 1st, 1987, at the age of 59, leaving her over 35-years of life to live on her own. She, of course, wasn’t ever entirely alone. Her loving children, and an ever-expanding gaggle of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren were appreciatively present more often than not.

When I ponder her life, I of course, am pondering it from my point of view. The point of view of one who came along third of 20 grandchildren. One who came along when she was in her early 40s, tirelessly working a variety of jobs to make ends meet. One who was 4-years old when she lost her 18-year old daughter, Julie, to a drunk driver in May of 1977. A loss, I imagine, that weighed on Grandma every day in the many days since.

One such limited point of view is woefully inadequate to effectively and accurately paint a worthy portrait of her 92 years of life. One can only tell you what they know.

I can tell you that I know that I loved my Grandma, and I can tell you that I know that she loved me. This love was not the kind of love one would describe as the “doting” grandmother type of love. Everyone loves differently, but love is love. Grandma Helen was a strong-willed, solitary woman, who mostly did as she wished, when she wished. To the very end, she was her own woman. I respect that.

Patients, is a virtue, it was, however, not one of Grandma Helens virtues, but she was kind, thoughtful, appreciative, and never one to leave work that needed to be done, undone. She was not all that interested in reminiscing about days gone by, or wishfully anticipating the possible life and times to come. Rather, she very much lived in the moment, and was especially fond of any moment that found pinochle cards in her hands or BINGO cards spread a dozen deep in front of her.

Although it was concerning to find that she had let my children drive her back to Lignite from BINGO in Minot when they were about 12-years old, I am thankful that they wanted to, and got to, experience BINGO with their Great-Grandma, just as I did when I was child.

One of my fondest memories of my Grandma Helen occurred in 1990, during my senior season of high school football, at a game in Sherwood. I had broken into the open on a kickoff return, and as I sprinted down the sidelines, with an eye on the two remaining defenders I needed to outrun for a touchdown, I heard a very distinct voice scream, in very close proximity to me, “GO JOSH!” I glanced to my left to see my Grandma Helen, running and yelling, not much out of arm’s length from me.

Go Grandma…you had quite a run.