just another old-fashioned love story.

i've called her Grandma Harris since I was little.
technically she's my dad's grandma, my great grandma. but we all know how i love to shorten everything!

her name is Dorella,  and she is 98 years old.

she isn't doing very well currently. the doctors think she's got 4 months left, at the most.

in order: my Grandma Leishman, my Grandma Harris, Jaycie the Cutest, and my cutest Dad, aka Shayne.

this picture was taken the week i left for college. 

looking at this picture kinda makes me think i must have inherited my ghostly pale skin from her...

anyways, my grandma lived in Millville, UT when i was little.

she had the coolest house and you had to go over a bridge to get there.

every week in the summer, my dad went and mowed her lawn and sometimes we stopped for ice cream cones from Macey's on the way home. once i was old enough to walk, her raspberry bushes seemed to quit making any raspberries.

i'll admit it, fair and square. I, Jaycie the most deviant human ever of all time, ate all of the raspberries, every single week. those bushes made enough raspberries, i just took and ate them all...

she also had this little paddle, it was this stick with a big fluffy heart pillow that she'd spank me with.

sometimes i'd go out of my way to be naughty just so she'd "spank" me, then i'd run off giggling because it didn't hurt at all.

my dad hates and i mean HATES Macaroni and Cheese. Every once in awhile, she'd cook us some for lunch and he'd eat it with no complaints at all, simply because his grandma cooked it for him.

she had two plum trees in her yard, and every fall when they started falling off, it was my job to go and pick them up before my dad mowed. i remember always watching him, sometimes riding with him, and when he had to mow under the tree, he'd always reach up, grab a plum, and wipe it off on his shirt to clean it before he ate it.

to this day, i refuse to wash my fruit. i wipe it off on my shirt, just like my dad.

when i was 17, i got a summer job at Williamsburg Retirement Community. my Grandma Harris was living there and i got to see her and serve her lunch every day that summer. nothing made my day more than to see her smile and overhear her bragging to her lunch-time friend ladies about me. it was then that i learned her favorite drink was cran-apple juice, no ice and that when it came to desserts and breads, she only likes to eat corners and ends.

later that fall, my Grandma Harris went to the hospital for the first time after a stroke. she'd been having mini strokes for awhile and this one was pretty bad. ever since then, her vocabulary has been very jumbled, and it's been hard for her to communicate. she did great until earlier this year, when her health really started to decline. now she's living with my dad's mom, my Grandma Leishman. she doesn't really remember me anymore, but she's sure changed my life. 

my Grandma Harris' husband died in 1950. i can't remember what he died from, and obviously i never met him. eventually she met the man of her dreams, but she was too busy taking care of her mom to marry him. that's how she is. she takes care of and puts everyone first, all the time. even now, she hates that she can't take care of everyone. and of course her boyfriend waited. and waited. and waited.

he dated her for 26 years before they were married. 

they had lunch together every day, and sometimes they went out on the weekends. finally, they got married. he was diagnosed with cancer, and died less than a year later. i never met him either, but i bet i would have loved him. 

is there anything cuter in the world than a man who will wait 26 years so he can marry the girl of his dreams? i don't think so, and if/when i get married, i hope it's to a guy who would do that for me.

she's an inspiration to so many people, and there's literally no way i could ever express how deeply i love her and how much i've learned from her over the years. if i grow up into half the lady she is, i'll be happy.

she's incredible and will be very missed when she's gone, but i'm sure her lover is waiting just as patiently as he did all those years ago for her to join him again, once and for all.

I love you, Grandma Harris. Thanks for spanking me all those years ago...and for never getting TOO mad about me eating all of the raspberries. I'm sure you were able to see me picking them through your kitchen window. I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed back then...

Do me a favor and give em' hell until I join you up there, okay?