April 9, 1930 - March 24, 2025
I didn't write about it at the time because I knew we were celebrating her life a few months later, once she was buried with my grandfather, and I wanted to let it sit a little bit. We lost her to dementia a couple of years ago, but because she was still alive, we were locked in an odd state of mourning the woman she was while trying not to actually mourn because we were still visiting the woman was now and it took a little bit to work through that. She deserved her whole life to be remembered, to be celebrated, and I wanted to remember all of it.
Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca, or Reebecca as my Grandma called me, and I’m Mary’s oldest grandchild.
As you likely know, in many ways Grandma left us long before her passing in late March. She developed dementia and increasingly lost her connection to reality and the present day. For a little while, when my grandpa visited her, we could still talk to her on the phone, then it was only visits, and by the end she really didn’t know who we were even when we were there in person, but she always smiled when she heard our voices. Even when her eyes never opened, she smiled. She squeezed our hands. She knew she loved us. And I believe she knew we loved her. I mention her long goodbye because it makes me particularly grateful to be together today to remember her and to fully celebrate her beautiful life, her incredible strength, her endless love, and the uniquely wonderful woman she was.
As you’ll hear a few times today, Grandma was our sunshine. I have never known someone so naturally cheerful or so determinedly optimistic. Happiness was her default setting and she intentionally set it there every day.
I think cheerfulness and optimism can give a misimpression of naivete, of someone who perhaps doesn’t feel or understand the challenges and darkness of the world around them. But my Grandma was deeply grounded in the realities of life. She was no stranger to hardship or trials, and she was one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. Because it is strength that enabled her to face the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be grateful, to see the good. She chose every day to wake up and believe, absolutely, that her life was wonderful.
“Everything will work out,” my grandma always said, and when you stubbornly refuse to believe otherwise, when you see blessings in everything, and when you pour hard work, love, and laughter into everything you do, it always does.
My grandma was born in Ironwood, Michigan in 1930, the youngest of three children. Her own grandmother lived with them and the stories of her childhood were filled with affection, love, and music. She graduated from Ironwood High School in 1948 and was honored to be chosen as the Ironwood Snow Queen in 1951. While she loved her home and family, she had a goal of further education and financial independence—largely to help her parents, but also because my grandma was quietly brave and more independent than you might think on first meeting. She worked full-time to support herself while attending Wisconsin State College in Superior, WI. She was rightly proud of her degree in elementary education and began teaching Kindergarten in Manitowoc, WI in 1952.
Set met the love of her life, my Grandpa Glenn, in college at Wisconsin State. They married on November 26, 1955 and moved to San Antonio, TX to start their Air Force life together. They raised four children, living all over the world, and moving a total of 25 times. My Grandma was frequently on her own while my Grandpa was on tour, and I’m in awe of the woman who managed a household and four children in far-flung new places. Every story she told was infused with a happiness that the facts didn’t always match – like having to pack up a house all on her own to move overseas, carefully weighing each item by holding it on a scale to ensure she met the packing limits, to a long-haul flight with 4 young children and without my grandpa, iPads, or comfortable athleisure travel clothing. “Oh yeah, that was tough” she’d say when retelling a story—one I’m certain I’d still be complaining about—with a happy giggle and matter-of-fact “but it all worked out.”
I was blessed to take many trips to see my grandparents growing up – both to their home in San Antonio and to their camper and cabin on Silver Lake. I remember how delighted she always was to see us, how joyfully she received any and all news about my life. I remember shopping trips to the BX, stops at the McDonalds by their house for lunch, and chatting with her from the counter in the kitchen as she made dinner or let me sneak Oreos before dinner.
She was generous and deeply practical. She could keep to a budget like no one else, but she also understood the delight of a little treat. She read the paper every day, kept up on current events, volunteered for numerous charities, was an enthusiastic sports fan, and was deeply devoted to her faith and church. She was a homemaker in the truest sense and a dedicated letter writer. I have so many cards and letters from her. She tracked the birthdays and anniversaries of every child, grandchild, great-grandchild, sibling, niece, nephew, and more, and she would pick out the perfect card for each person and occasion and then fill it with a long hand-written note full of news and love.
She was there, with my grandpa, at every major life event- confirmation, high school graduation, college graduation, wedding, law school graduation, and the day I was sworn into the bar. She adored my children and each of them has a blankie knit by her. My middle, now 15, still has scraps of hers in her room, too fragile to use, but too precious to store away. When she and my grandpa used to drive to Silver Lake in the summer she would stop at my house, visit with my young children, and sing them “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “You Are My Sunshine,” and tell us how wonderful we all were.
My Grandpa always had a big presence, but Grandma’s was just as strong. Softer perhaps, but with a spine of steel. She was the only person who could out-stubborn my Grandpa and she did it in her quiet way, with a little smile and a glint in her eye. I always wondered if my Grandpa knew that her “well, we’ll see” with a loving pat on his hand when they were at an impasse meant that she was going to do exactly what she wanted. I think he did. She was his other half, and he loved her with everything he had.
She was our sunshine and we miss her so very much. But there’s so much comfort in knowing that she’s with grandpa now, no doubt holding his hand and singing their duet of “You Are My Sunshine” while gazing into each other’s eyes.
I know that right now my grandpa is telling her she’s the best, most beautiful woman in the world, that he’s so lucky to have married her, that the family they built together is so wonderful. And he’s right. He was so lucky and so were we, to have known and been loved by Mary Nordin. And I know she’s looking at him and thinking the same, patting his hand, and at peace knowing everything did indeed, all work out.
