{"id":352520,"date":"2010-02-22T23:03:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T04:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451d48a69e20120a8c66612970b"},"modified":"2010-02-22T23:04:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T04:04:08","slug":"in-honor-of-grandma-rose-you%e2%80%99re-more-than-a-body-a-vibrant-spirit-won%e2%80%99t-be-held-back-by-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/352520","title":{"rendered":"In Honor of Grandma Rose: You\u2019re more than a body: A vibrant spirit won\u2019t be held back by aging"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

My grandma Rose passed away last night on 2\/21\/10 at the age of 97. She was one of the role models in my life and someone I held in very high regard. I'm going to fly back to California on Thursday for her funeral.<\/p>\n

In the second to last time I saw her before she passed, I write this post on Back in Skinny Jeans in Sept 2008 about how Grandma taught me a lesson about what real beauty is. This post was one of the most popular on BISJ, and is a loving example of what we can learn from those who are wise and full of grace.<\/p>\n

I love you Grandma and thank you for helping to make me the woman I am today \ud83d\ude42 Rest in loving peace.<\/p>\n

————<\/p>\n

\n

\"Grandma_folks\"<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Everyone say hello to my Grandma Rose here with my folks. I want to share with you all how this Saturday, in less than an hour, Grandma taught me what real beauty is about. Granny is the best teacher that anyone could know, and she will be 97 in October. Rose is now bed ridden in the hospital
\nbecause of a slew of health issues, but somehow her spirit does not know that
\nbecause she can still light up a room better than anyone I know. More on that
\nin a bit. <\/p>\n

This weekend was pretty intense for me as in one day
\nliterally back-to-back, I attended a funeral for one of my uncle\u2019s who passed
\naway, visited my Grandma Rose at the Convalescent hospital, and saw baby pictures
\nof grandma\u2019s latest great grand-children. Yes folks, I got the entire life
\ncycle in mere hours. <\/p>\n

But, more about what my amazing Grandma taught me about
\nbeauty\u2026<\/p>\n

Grandma Rose is one of my sheroes, and you will quickly see
\nwhy. This woman has 10 children (9 girls and 1 boy), 38 grandchildren, and to
\ndate about 32 great-grandchildren (I say about only because I lose track as my
\nbrain gets overwhelmed sometimes with the enormousity of my family.) Besides
\nbeing a mother to a football team, she was a pharmacist, a high school teacher,
\nand later on a politico in her home province in the Philippines. Yeah, she\u2019s
\nbeyond super woman, and you get a glimpse as to where some of my need to be
\nperfect girl came to play.<\/p>\n

Everyone Loves Grandma
\nRose<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

But even more amazing than her accomplishments is the
\nvibrant spirit that lives inside her. Everyone that has ever met my grandmother
\nloves her because she is the kind of person that everyone wants to be around
\nbecause she makes you feel special, at ease, and happy. Grandma is quite the
\ncomedian too. She\u2019s like laughing gas. As an example, one of my cousins recently
\nhad this conversation with her: <\/p>\n

\n…We spend more time making our box look prettier instead of filling
\nthat box with beautiful, loving, vibrant spirit. Why? …<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDid you have many boyfriends when you were younger grandma?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yes of course, I
\nhad very many. Plenty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, why did you pick grandpa then?\u201d<\/p>\n

She shakes her head laughing, \u201cI have no idea\u2026I'm so pretty. I had so many
\nboyfriends.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is no way you can be or stay depressed, sad, angry, or
\nnegative in any way when you\u2019re around my Grandma Rose. If I could bottle up
\nher spirit and sell it, I\u2019d be on QVC faster than you could get your happy meal
\nat the drive through.<\/p>\n

Come give Grandma a
\nhug<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

Grandma Rose\u2019s warmth is combined with the fact that she
\nlikes to kiss and hug everyone. She likes to touch people on the arm when they
\nspeak. She\u2019ll hold your hand as she leads you to the buffet at a picnic. She\u2019ll
\nreach her hands out to you because she wants you to be closer so she can hear
\nyou. At the convalescent hospital, the staff considers her as one nurse put it,
\n\u201cshe\u2019s just the cutest thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

And that is a huge testament to Grandma because in that
\nhospital almost everyone there is at the end of their days mostly from old age,
\nand what was hard for me emotionally was to see all these people literally
\nwasting away. You can even see that the spirit has left their eyes already, because
\nthere is something very lonely and depressing about spending the end of your
\nlife in a cold hospital. But again, that\u2019s if you let it. This is where Grandma
\nshows us different.<\/p>\n

Grandma just won\u2019t
\ndie<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

Physically, as I mentioned, Grandma Rose is pretty much bed
\nridden and because of that her legs look like little twigs. She can go out and
\nabout in the hospital in her wheelchair. She has cataracts and has a hard time seeing,
\nand she has diabetes. She has also lost a good portion of her hearing which is
\nwhy she talks really loud. She has so many physical ailments that most people
\nwould feel defeated but not my Rose.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an on-going joke about my Grandma in that she just
\nwon\u2019t die. There have been 3 situations where the doctors have pretty much told
\nthe family that she is a goner so go get her affairs in order now. People have
\nflown in from other countries to say their goodbyes, and when she was supposed
\nto be dead, somehow Granny will do a switcheroo and bam! She\u2019s alive and
\nkicking. <\/p>\n

Simultaneously it is flabbergasting and hysterical. I\u2019ll
\nbelieve Grandma\u2019s dead when she\u2019s in her casket, but if Grandma has her way,
\nthat won\u2019t be for a long time because she just loves living so much. This is
\none of my aspirations, to be like my Grandmother and continue to be so filled
\nwith joy and love of life that the state of my physical body will not hinder
\nthat spirit. You work with what you got versus trying to make what you got work
\nfor you. That goes back to spirit-based thinking versus, ego-based thinking,
\nand something I wanted to share with all of you.<\/p>\n

You are far more than
\na body<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

We get so engrossed in our \u201ccontainer\u201d; how it looks, how
\nmuch it weighs, how much it\u2019s flawed, and on and on, that we forget that the
\nbody is really only one small part of our totality. It\u2019s one thing to want to
\nlook good and take care of yourself, but it\u2019s a whole other thing to let your
\nbody ruin your day, your attitude about yourself, or steal joy from you just
\nbecause you don\u2019t like the way it looks or because you don\u2019t look pretty like
\nthe girls in the magazines or what you think other people consider attractive. <\/p>\n

What good is a pretty box if it\u2019s filled with bitterness, anger,
\nand un-love? We spend more time making our box look prettier instead of filling
\nthat box with beautiful, loving, vibrant spirit. Why? People are far more attracted to energy than packaging, and yet, so many of us, myself included, get dellusioned into giving more power to our packaging than what kind of energy we put out into the world. Would you rather be just a pretty box or be the light in someone's universe?<\/p>\n

As I sat next to my grandmother on her bed holding her hand,
\nall I could see was this vibrant spirit that just rejects, absolutely refuses,
\nto let her body get in the way of her love of life and her feelings of joy. At
\nthat moment, I got very clear about how much time and energy I continue to
\nspend on senseless things that do more to hinder my spirit than help it. Indeed, I have spent many years already healing much of the turmoil I had been carrying around, but the visit with Grandma brought me to a new level, a higher more expansive level. It was
\nlike one of those moments in a cartoon where a coconut hits you on the head
\nand all of a sudden you see the light. <\/p>\n

I saw the light through my grandmother\u2019s light.  She invited me to her birthday because it\u2019s
\nher favorite day of the year, a sentiment I share with my grandma. \u201cIt will be
\na great celebration,\u201d she beamed. Indeed it will be because Grandma Rose makes
\neveryone feel like a festivity, and I am one lucky granddaughter!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/img><\/a>
\n<\/img><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My grandma Rose passed away last night on 2\/21\/10 at the age of 97. She was one of the role models in my life and someone I held in very high regard. I'm going to fly back to California on Thursday for her funeral. In the second to last time I saw her before she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2831,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}