In Loving Memory of Aileen Riddle

Aileen Riddle was my great grandmother. I just called her grandmother. She passed away a little over two weeks ago, and I really want to share with you some of my best memories of her and my Pa.

My Pa and Granmother were some of the most hardworking people that I have ever met. They ran a small convenience store for a good majority of their adulthood and lived in a beautiful, yet small, brick house that was right beside the store. By the time that I was born they had sold the store, but they still lived beside it.

Every Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve when I would go to their house, I would also walk over to the store with the other great-grandchildren and we would all pick out some candy that we wanted. I will never forget how cool it was to hear all of grandmother's stories about the store. Another wonderful memory of grandmother occurred every single time that we went to visit her. She ALWAYS had Breyer's ice cream in the freezer of her refrigerator. Every single time we came, she would offer us that vanilla bean breyer's ice cream. It was no doubt the best ice cream that I have ever tasted. The other awesome thing about Pa and Grandmother's house was their laundry shoot. They had an old wooden door that you could dump the clothes into and they would go straight down the shoot into a bin in the basement. I thought that was the coolest thing that I had ever seen. Any time I was there my sister, my cousin, and I would yell down the shoot to each other and toss things down to each other through the shoot. 

I loved that house, but I loved my great-grandparents so much more than that. 

I am truly going to miss Grandmother, but I am completely at peace with the fact that she is in Heaven right now with my Pa. She missed him so much, and she can finally be with him again. 

So, as cliche as this sounds, go live life with the people that you love. Seriously. I would give anything to be sitting across from my grandmother right now at her kitchen counter, eating ice-cream with her while Pa watches baseball.