I only knew Georgianna at the end of her life.
But I quickly came to love her wit, her kindness, her warm hospitality. She didn’t grow cantankerous, petty or small minded as she aged. Instead she retained her quick smile, relishing her Chinese takeout, playing word games on her tablet, laughing when her great granddaughters frolicked on her fancy walker, overlooking the shrieks of their sibling rivalry.
When I knew her, she lived in a third story condo on a busy street in Victoria. But whenever we came to visit, there was a faint sense that we were actually stopping by her porch in the prairies, dropping in on a warm summer evening when she had all the time in the world. There was that expansive ease about her, a contentedness, an unconcern about material things.
And yet, true to her Prarie roots, she was industrious to the end. Her bony hands sewing medical bandages for people across the developed world. Making them by the hundreds, by the thousands. Or sewing her bright, floral cloth shopping bags for the family – so bright and so floral that I felt self-conscious taking them to the store at first.
On her Prarie porch, Georgianna and I often spoke often about heaven. She was curious about it. She had so many questions that have now been answered.
Yet underneath those questions there was in her a kind of contentedness – not without regrets – but the kind of contentedness you only get from a life well lived. A life lived for things that truly matter, a life lived in deep service to others.
Georgianna knew that from beginning to end she was being upheld by divine arms. And from that deep security she loved us well.
