In Memory of Grandma Rose

Jon's grandma Rose died on Oct. 16. She lived a very full life, many details of which no one person knows, in fact all her kids and grandkids can, perhaps, get a complete story of her life if they each tell the little tidbits they each know. We did find out more about her after she died, most of it sounds like a story from the soaps she was so fond of watching. Here's a list of what we thought we knew and what the real story was (or so we think):

1.Fiction: Her middle name was Jemima.

Fact: She hated her middle name, Jenima, and so purposely misspelled it on her driver's liscence when she moved to America in 1944.

2. Fiction: She didn't know how old she was because the hospital she was born in (Phillippines) burned down.

Fact: When she moved to the States her mom, Consuelo, changed her birthdate so she could not be traced. Her true birthday was 11 September 1920, she said it was 1923.

3. Fiction: Her sister, Edna, was her full sister.

Fact: She was her half sister (they had different dads, both were sailors, as their mom, a nurse in WWI had a thing for men in uniform), but when their mom brought them to the states she changed their names to her sister's (their aunt's) last name and said they were full sisters.

4. Fiction: She was an American citizen with a Father named Kelly.

Fact: When her mom gave her a new identity to come to America it was under the premise that she was the child of her aunt, whose American husband, Kelly, had long since passed away. Her true father was a German sailor.

None of this did we find out until after she passed.

Jon's mom, Edna, says they lived on dirt floors, living on every corner of Lake Elsinore throughout their lives. She lived in San Francisco and eventually came to Elsinore in 1957, and began attending the Baptist Church that she would for the rest of her life . Grandma Rose was a prayer warrior, and we could always count on her to be praying for us, whether we knew we needed it or not.

The first time I went to her house I was a starving student and she forced me to go shopping in her pantry, which was stocked full of food she specifically bought to give away. She knew countless amounts of the bible by heart, memorized many old hymns, and spent hours and hours of her days later in life alone with God. It's different when you know where a lost loved one is going; Edna was there when she passed and said it was one of the most beautiful things she's seen. This is very hard on her 4 kids, but I can only see how it pains Jon's mom. The other day she said she feels as if you can drive a truck through the hole in her heart. This is a very hard time for this family. Please pray for peace and a little bit of relief, as well as unity in the division of the estate for Edna and her brother and sisters.