From “Embracing Your Second Calling: Find Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life” by Dale Hanson Bourke
It’s not easy to get to Pembine, Wisconsin. From Washington DC, it requires a flight to Chicago, then one to Green Bay, and either a commuter flight to Iron Mountain, Michigan, or a long drive. But because I wanted my two boys to know their Great-Grandma Hanson, I loaded them and took them for a visit.
Grandma Hanson was in a nursing home, and I thought it would lift her spirits to see my boys. Although we weren’t exactly sure when we would arrive, I told her that I would see her sometime in the afternoon. So when we walked into her room, I was surprised to find it empty. “Oh, she’s probably either at crafts or maybe it’s time for the Bible study,” the nurse told me, not at all surprised that my ninety-two-year-old grandmother was missing. “She’s a pretty busy lady”
The boys and I went out to get something to eat and returned an hour later. This time we found Grandma Hanson in her room along with half a dozen other people. She was glad to see us and pleased that we could meet her other visitors. She began introducing us, and I realized that her visitors included two college students, a middle-aged woman, and a young couple with their toddler. During the next two days of our visit, Grandma had many more visitors of all ages. They seemed to arrive at all times of the day, and not one of them seemed to be there because they were worried that my grandma was lonely. They came because they loved seeing her, were seeking her advice, or just wanted to spend some time with someone with twinkling blue eyes and a big smile.
Grandma seemed intimately aware of the details of their lives. She’s taught Sunday school for sixty years, and many of the adults who came to visit had first met her as children. She’d loved them through scraped knees and scrapes with the law. She’d gone to their weddings and watched them have children of their own. SOme of them looked like they had just come from church, and some looked like they hadn’t been to church for some time. (After one particularly tough-looking teenager left, she said, “He thinks he doesn’t believe in the Lord anymore, but he’ll be back.”) I was amazed that such a wild-looking teen had taken the time to come to a nursing home to visit my grandma.
When it was time to leave, Grandma Hanson hugged us all and thanked us for coming. She was grateful for our visit, but we were even more grateful for having spent the time with such a remarkable woman. “The older I get, the more I realize how truly remarkable Grandma Hanson really was.
She had very little education and never traveled out of the Midwest. She lived mostly in small towns, and her resume consisted of raising four boys, acres of vegetables, and an assortment of chickens, cows, pigs, and goats in order to feed the family. Grandma had no power, little money, and none of what the world would consider success. Yet in her nineties, widowed and surviving two of her four sons, she was one of the most popular residents of the nursing home. People went out of their way to visit her, and she was loved and valued for who she was and what she had given to so many.
My grandma has been gone for some time now, but I carry that image of her with me. The photos of Grandma in the nursing home, arthritis-crippled arms around each of her great-grandsons are prominent in the albums I have made for each of them. My sons have both heard many stories about Grandma Hanson, because I want them to remember their spiritual legacy. She was the one who, as the young mother of four boys, married to an alcoholic husband, and feeling hopeless about her life, took her children to a nearby church and came to know God in a way that changed her and her sons. Eventually, Grandpa Hanson came around too, and they spent much of their married life doing “the Lord’s work” either as volunteers or as caretakers of a Christian camp.
Our family can trace our spiritual roots back to this humble woman, and I like reminding my sons that one person’s decisions can influence the next generations. We have so much, thanks to Grandma Hanson.