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Home » Contests » Winning Stories » Shirlee Hill - July 2006 winner Shirlee Hill of Iron Mountain, MI
My parents died in a car accident when I was only 7 months old and I was raised by my grandmother. Grandma always told me that my parents were like a couple of lovebirds so I have chosen the lovebirds charm (#0144 Lovebirds) to start off my bracelet. I have so many happy memories of growing up with grandma that I hardly know where to start! Grandma loved animals and was always taking care of strays. She used to joke that we were living in Noah's Ark (#1863 Noah's Ark)! One of my favorite memories is baking Christmas cookies with grandma (#5780 Cookie Cutter). We would bake cookies for an entire week and then package them in pretty boxes covered with Christmas paper and take a box to each one of the neighbors on Christmas Eve. We didn't have a lot of money but Grandma always made Christmas special! Faith was very important to her and she instilled a deep love for God in me as well. When I was very little, she used to read to me from the Bible every night before I went to sleep (#0436 Bible). We enjoyed attending all the church activities and functions and were good friends with the pastor and his family. One year pastor and his family were going to a carnival in a nearby town. Pastor asked Grandma if I could come along. I was so happy when Grandma said yes! It was my first carnival and I had so much fun! Pastor's daughter was 2 years older than me and she loved to ride the carousel. At first I was a little frightened but it turned out to be my favorite ride, too! She and I must have ridden that carousel at least 20 times (#3345 Carousel)! I never really knew my Grandfather. He had had cancer and passed away a year after my parents died. There was a big grandfather clock in Grandma's parlor. She used to tell me that Grandpa would hold me up in front of it and how much I loved watching the pendulum swing back and forth, when it would chime I would laugh and laugh! She said Grandpa got such a kick out of that! I now have that grandfather clock in my living room and it keeps me close to him and to Grandma, too (#3556 Grandfather Clock). The day after my 14th birthday, Grandma called me into her bedroom and opened up the hope chest at the foot of her bed (#0863 Hope Chest). Inside were mementos of my mother and father including mom's wedding dress, little dresses and blankets she had knitted for me while she was expecting, dad's medals from the Army and mom's diaries. Mom had started to write things in diaries when she became engaged to dad. Grandma and I sat and smiled and cried while reading her hopes, her dreams, her plans for the future. She wrote about how much she loved me and how all she wanted was for me to have a happy life. I met my husband John in high school,he and grandma got along great! He was always finding excuses to come over to grandma's house to help her fix this or take care of that, but both of us knew he was coming over to see me! After graduation I got a job in a travel agency in the next town. I used to take travel brochures home with me to show grandma we would marvel at how many different places there were in the world and how we wished we could visit them all (#3099 Globe). John had worked things out to where he could drive me to work in the mornings and bring me home in the afternoons. We were deeply in love were planning our wedding. We wanted to get married on the most romantic day of the year, Valentine's Day. Grandma was so happy excited for us! One day John was a little late coming to take me home but soon I saw a car coming down the road. It wasn't John's car, though- it was pastor's. Pastor stopped the car and he got out and walked over to me. He didn't have to say anything, I knew something had happened to grandma. Pastor's wife had gone over to pay her a visit and had found her sitting on the sofa with some of the travel brochures in her lap. She had had a heart attack. I was only 22 years old.
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