Saying Goodbye
Monday, December 31, 2007, my family got together in Groton, SD to say goodbye to my Grandma, Margaret Hubbard. We received a call on Christmas Eve that she had stopped swallowing: the final stage of Alzheimers that has been steadily stealing her life for the past nine years.
I’ve always known Grandma for her love of dancing, wild colored clothing, her cooking and her trailer at the lake where she taught me how to fish (and how to clean what I caught - which I still do to this day 
.
What I learned this weekend was that I knew only a small part of who Margaret Hubbard really was.
To the community of Groton, South Dakota, she was much more. She was a midwife for many years. A house-cleaner at the Circle Pines motel. For 30+ years, she was secretary to the superintendent of Groton High School, where she took care of everything from keeping the school running, to watching out for the kids, to punching lunch tickets, to being the ’safe place’ for the country kids to stay with in bad weather. She helped with the ladies auxiliary with baking for church functions. She worked trades with local hunters - they provided her with plenty of game and meat for the year, and she baked for them at Christmas.
I cannot even come close to everything she was to everyone. But, I can say this… I miss her greatly. I have missed her for the past nine years. Alzheimers took her from us at that time. What it left was simply her shell. Last week, she was finally released from that horrible disease and she is now fishing once more, remembering all of her life’s good times, and out dancing to all hours of the evening.
Grandma… thanks for all the wonderful things you taught me, and those you never realized you passed along to me: like being who I am and living my life no matter what anyone else thinks. Life is for living, and loving and sharing. For that lesson, I am forver grateful.
My lesson for those reading this: Spend time with those you love, for you never know how long you’ll have with them.
Goodnight, Grandma. I look forward to fishing with you again!
Love, Julie
