Great Grandma recently went home. She was 92.
I met her when David and I were dating - a short, warm, generous-hearted lady with a thick accent and a white/grey bowl cut type hairstyle. I loved her instantly. She spoke four languages in her life. When David first visited the house where I was living when he met me, he looked next door and announced that his grandmother had lived right beside the house where I lived. He described the back yard with a huge tree in it that he used to climb. It held many memories for him of his growing up.
Olga Syska was in Ukraine (She was German) when WWII broke out. Her daughter (my mother-in-law) was born and she decided to go back to Germany. The German soldiers were actually a god-send for her for she followed them back to Germany. They fed her what they could (kept her from starvation) Which is actually quite incredible in that Hitler hardly fed his own soldiers and many were close to starvation.
David's Mum can remember watching from the window on a ship on the black sea while other boats were being bombed. They were the fortunate ones.
She lived a tough life. I often wonder what she must have thought of the affluence and materialism of the land down under as she aged. I think she was too busy serving cups of tea and bickkies to notice. She was so generous and insisted you eat when you came to visit. So eat we did - cake, biscuits, more cake, cordial, etc. etc. No one ever left Great Grandma's
house with an empty tummy.
She came to the Lord when she was in her forties through a Billy Graham crusade. Her daughter also did at about the same time. As her daughter puts it, 'Billy Graham was her pin up boy' she thought very highly of him and read many books his organisation sent out. She was a simple woman, never having studied past grade three. She also simply loved. She would always be planting kisses on our head when we came to stay. That was Olga.
We visited her not long before she left us. She was, by then strapped in a wheelchair and speaking Russian (she had alzeimers). She did say a few things in English but was hardly able to open her eyes. I snapped a quick shot of Jayden beside her. He will not remember her. I am not sure if Rosa will either. I wish they could have known her. They will probably just remember the musty cabbage smell of the nursing home, the stare of many eyes on them as they bobbed about, the ramp they liked to run up and down or the stuffy room where Great Grandma sat - windows closed in the heat of summer because she feared we might be cold.
Perhaps Joshua will remember a little more. I was quite surprised when he wrote his little speech for the funeral how little he could remember of her prior to the nursing home. I guess we tend to think of grandmas and great-grandmas as old and don't really think of them ever being young, free, in love or even as a child just like them.
But we still have grandmothers and grandfathers (most of us) to remind us that life is short, precious, that we will slow down (at least physically). That the important things are not the things we find ourselves spending so much time doing - running here and there, making lunch, washing clothes, etc. (as necessary as they are).
I am overwhelmed to think about the way that a simple seed of faith has impacted so great a field. I feel blessed. I feel challenged. Challenged to carry that seed on. Thankyou Great-Grandma, Olga Syska. Thankyou for your simple, straight-forward faith!
