Grandee's Funeral and Changes in America.

 

Good morning my dears, I'm joining in with Five on Friday today, let's get started!

 

ONE

 

My husbands maternal grandmother "Grandee" passed away last week on June 17th at her son's home in Arlington, Texas. Her funeral was on Wednesday, June 24th at St. Mary Catholic Church in Eugene, Oregon. Her 83rd birthday would have been this Sunday on June 28th. Here she is pictured with Papa on a cruise in the late 1990's.

 

 

TWO

 

We weren't able to make it, but a lot of family on the West coast gathered in Eugene, Oregon for her funeral. Grandee's favorite color was purple, so everyone dressed in purple to attend her funeral. Afterwards, they went back to her home and released purple balloons with sentiments written on them. Here's a picture of my niece, nephew and father-in-law about to release some balloons.

 

THREE

 

Papa has been dealing with the death difficultly. He has Alzheimer's, so every few minutes he continues to ask, "where's Grandee?" and he has been told over, and over again that she's passed. I think he's finally accepted  it.

 

My mother-in-law said that he sat with Grandee in the visitation for quite awhile, and when they came back they asked "Papa, why is Grandee's lipstick all smudged?", turns out he had been kissing her! They left behind a legacy of sixty-one years of marriage, 4 children, 9 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren.  

 

 

My husband is the spitting image of his Papa, and has his sense-of-humor. They also have the same love of swimming pools, here's one of Papa in the pool he built at their home of forty-six years in Eugene, Oregon.

 

FOUR

 

With Grandee's recent passing I have been updating her page on Ancestry.com with photos, documents and stories to preserve for generations to come. By 2013, at just twenty-seven I had lost all my grandparents and my dad. Perhaps, that spurred my interest in genealogy. We started with a few handouts from family members who hadn't done much research besides skimming the pages so we had a huge undertaking.

 

It has been such a wonderful journey, and has created such a stability in our family. We've been working on putting together our family history website, but there is still so many tweaks we're going to do before we can share it with family and friends.

 

 

Do you do genealogy, or preserve your family history? I love hearing other people's stories of how they gather all their research.

 

I also recently came across a good resource to help improve my family history research, and blog writing. BYU has free courses on family history and family life. Like me, you don't have to be LDS to take the classes but it's definitely something I admire them for - their love of creating a functional, intentional family.

 

FIVE

 

Oh, and last but not least, did you read TIME magazine's recent article? In 2040 the minorities will be the majority of Americans. Currently, the minorities make up 37.9% of the population but more than half of under 5 year olds are now a minority.

 

Also, the white race in America has more deaths than births at a 3:1 ratio, and more millenials (1982-2000) than baby boomers (1946-1964). We are deemed the most diverse generation yet. I was surprised that only 155,000 white Europeans a year coming from Europe, like me! It's fascinating reading about the changes that are coming to America.

 

Many thanks for visiting and for praying for our family during this time,

 

~ Kiki Nakita ~

 

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