Grandma Mary Lou

Great-Grandma Mary Lou Koester, Grandpa Lindy Koester, Shannon Koester Ridenour, baby Thomas Koester Ridenour

Last night Grandma Mary Lou passed away from complications due to leukemia.  She was 86 years old.  The "greats" (great grandkids) took to calling her simply "Grandma Lou."  She LOVED the kids and was always doting on us/them.  She had six of her own, 14 grandkids, and twenty greats and counting!  A week before her death my family got to have a "Christmas" celebration with her.  My dad and Jon Rastede went to her house, found lots of presents she has been buying all throughout the year, and wrapped them up for each of the kids.  What special gifts.  Right now I am wearing a gold locket she gave me for my high school graduation.  It has my name and year engraved on the back side.  As the last week wore on I was able to sit with her on two occasions, feeding her ice chips, and talking with her.  What an honor.  I remember a couple months ago telling my uncle Doug that he has really been busy after having taken grandma to multiple doctor appointments recently.  He said the same thing: what an honor.  Monday of this very week marked my grandpa Duane's 21st year not being with us.  Grandma lived twenty one years without him.  She was an amazing woman.

So many of my childhood memories include Grandma Mary Lou.  When I think of her old house on highway 9, my memory explodes with childhood nostalgia.  Playing with cousins, building "tents" to sleep in, our Christmas stockings that she crocheted with our names (mine was green and a little brighter than the others!), the hallway to the basement stairs, the storage room with wonders to explore, dressing up in square dancing skirts and performing skits for the grown-ups, grandma making pancakes with hot dogs in them for breakfast (yummy!), the dining room table full of extra places for aunts and uncles (this very table and the matching hutch now reside in my very own kitchen!), sitting on the couch in the front room reading my English assignment before late basketball practice, the famous snack drawer in the kitchen, and the list goes on...

Her new house in Allen symbolizes more recent memories, and is what my own children will remember of "Grandma Lou."  Her great box of toys in the closet, her fridge always stocked with juice boxes, her graduation pictures of us in the hall, her baby pictures of us in the basement, riding our bikes across the street at the Methodist Church, spending our Halloween nights with her trick or treating, Christmases, Thanksgivings, summer family nights...

There was never any doubt in my mind that grandma loved me.  She could be blunt and call it like she saw it (maybe that's where I get it???), but in the end you just knew she cared so much.  She was incredibly proud of her family.  I remember many times when we would go out to eat in Allen at the Village Inn together as a whole family.  She would walk in proud as punch to be the charge of this Koester Klan.  I have been thinking lately how none of us would be here without her.  What a debt we owe to those who go before us.  To our elders.  To our grandmothers.  I wrote her a note shortly before her death to let her know how proud I am to be her granddaughter, part of her legacy.  We live on, and so does she.

Thank you grandma.  I love you.

P.S.  I am so glad I got this picture.  As you can see Thomas can't take his eyes off of grandma.  She got his very first big grin about a month before this picture and this day he was talking her ear off.  We found out about grandma's illness very shortly after Thomas was born.  I am also glad I chose Koester for his middle name:)