don't let life pass you by

Wow. Life has been a whirlwind the last two weeks.

I just finished my last Ochem exam before the final in a week and a half... That is a relief to have done. I still have a big paper to write for my Honors Directions and Dimensions in Healthcare class... I'll be writing about women's reproductive rights and politics... and why there is such a disparity between the rights of women and the rights of men when it comes to reproductive rights, according to the state. I also have ONE MORE paper for Spanish, which shouldn't be too intense, since I've been putting in a lot of work in all my papers all throughout the semester. And, haha, Developmental Psych, but I'm not too worried at all about that. So, basically the one thing that I'll be sweating next week will be the final ACS OChem test.

So... why haven't I posted in a while? I took a day off of school and went down to Mankato Tuesday afternoon for my Grandma Hensel's funeral. What an amazing woman... she spent her entire life caring for others, loving, and being so utterly accepting of absolutely everyone. We were talking about this at her funeral: Who can truly say that they have never said a bad thing about ANYONE their entire life? I remember so clearly waking up on those Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations in her enormous farm house, going with Laura to the kitchen to peek at all the breakfast foods in the porch (mmm... her caramel rolls were to die for!), and there was Grandma, working away at making a pot-full of oatmeal for all the family.

She would just be humming away as we walked into the kitchen, smiling broadly when she turned around to see us rummaging through the pans and tins of goodies on the porch. She would ask us what we wanted for breakfast, and then after getting that ready, she would run out to the chicken coop and the garden to take care of chores. Her kitchen always smelled of warm, rich aromas mixed with the freshness of cool, washed vegetables and the smell of dew on the grass through the window over the sink. The rest of the house always smelled musty, but we all knew why that was; Catherine worked so hard in the kitchen that there was rarely a moment that she sat and rested at my grandfather's side. She lived for her family, and she lived for her husband. Most of all, though, she lived for the Lord and believed in him so much that she failed to believe that there could be a truly bad soul in the world.

My grandma Catherine Hensel 1910-2006
Caring, joyful, devoted, compassionate, beautiful, visionary, loving, humming, giving, grandma, mother, wife, sister, and great-grandma. She gave us life; she gave us the world.