Grandma Paulson's Eulogy

We buried my grandma, Irene Paulson, on Saturday, December 7, 2019. I was asked to speak at her funeral. As I thought about it and prayed how I could best honor her, I felt God saying to me, "Just say what she would want people to know. Tell them about Jesus." So I did. The following is the eulogy I wrote and read at her funeral to honor my family's matriarch and to pay tribute to her steadfast devotion to Jesus.

Today we all gather together to remember and celebrate a very special woman, my grandma. What a joyous privilege it is to honor her today, to laugh together, and to talk about the things we loved about her. Especially at this time of year, during the Christmas season when we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus.

I was very blessed to grow up with my grandma close by, being a big part of my life. I have a lot of fond memories of Sunday dinners she cooked up for us at the farmhouse. I saw her every Sunday here, in this very church, my entire childhood and into young adulthood. She came to my band & choir concerts, sporting events, and birthday parties. Like any loving grandparent, she enjoyed supporting all of her grandkids in their extra-curricular activities. She saw a lot of wrestling matches, football games, basketball games, and volleyball matches. She attended all sorts of school concerts. She really enjoyed watching her grandkids sing and perform.

Many years ago, before our family exploded in size, we would all pile into Grandma and Grandpa’s farmhouse to celebrate Christmas. I remember there were years when some of the adults would sit down at Grandma’s dining room table for a game of Trivial Pursuit while we were there for Christmas, usually playing in pairs. Us kids would stand behind the chairs, gathered around, listening to the game being played. And whoever was teamed up with Grandma, usually won. She knew so many things! I remember even as a young girl realizing how smart my grandma was.

Besides being smart, the other thing people probably noticed pretty quickly about Grandma as they got to know her was that she loved Jesus. Her faith was a huge part of her life.

When Grandpa was alive, he would read out loud a devotion from Our Daily Bread and then the passage of Scripture referenced for that day’s devotion. He did this every day when his family was seated around the dinner table. This was a challenging thing to sit through as a kid. Because you had to be quiet and sit still. We would constantly be “shushed” as Grandpa’s baritone voice read Bible verses before he prayed for the meal. But this consistent action of inviting God into their home and pausing to recognize that every good and perfect gift is from above, as it says in the book of James, was a priority in my grandparent’s lives. And it was started as an act of worship because my grandma wanted God to be honored in her home. She was the one who insisted on family devotion time.

If Grandma knew you by name, she prayed for you. And she would tell you so. There were so many Sundays that I sat right down there, next to her. And when the time of the service would come to talk about prayer requests, she would sit there with pen and paper, writing down the prayer requests so she could later remember and be intentional in her prayer time at home.

When she was in her 80s, Grandma had a couple of her teenage grandkids approach her and ask if she would be willing to lead them in a Bible study. And guess what. She opened up her apartment to her grandkids and their friends and led them in a Bible study. What a special time that must have been. I would imagine that a woman in her 80s and teenagers don’t have a whole lot of common ground. Except that they all recognized they needed Jesus in their lives.

Because Grandma passed away during the Christmas season, I’ve been thinking a lot about past Christmases. Once the Paulson family had too many people to fit into a house, we moved our Christmas celebration right here, to Reeve Church. Grandma loved her Savior. And one of her greatest desires was to have everyone she loved also have a personal relationship with Jesus. There were many Christmases where we would gather, and Grandma would share the gospel message. She spoke about how Jesus died for each of us. How we all need to confess our sin to God, believe that Jesus died on the cross for us, and then rose again and is alive today. She told us that Jesus was the only way to heaven as it says in John 14:6. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes through the Father except through me.” She wanted to make sure her family knew Jesus loves us, that he died for us, that not one of us is beyond his grip of saving grace. Grandma knew the joy of serving God and being sold out to him. She wanted everyone to also know and experience that joy. To have a daily relationship with him.

My grandma is in heaven today. Of that we’re certain. And it’s not because she had a stellar church attendance record. Sitting in church doesn’t get you into heaven. And it’s not because she taught Sunday School years ago or lead a Bible study for teenagers. Your works do not get you into heaven. And it wasn’t because she was sweet and read her Bible so much she knew it forward and backward. You can’t earn your way into heaven. It wasn’t her parents’ faith, her husbands’ faith, or anyone else’s faith that got her to heaven. You don’t get there by association. It was because she confessed in her heart that she was a sinner. We all are. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” She put her trust in Jesus. Her salvation was the foundation of her faith. All that other stuff, going to church, praying, serving others, reading the Bible. Those were the building blocks she stacked on the foundation to build a beautiful life chasing hard after the heart of God.

Like I said before, all Grandma wanted was for her family to love and serve Jesus. And a lot of us do. Not because Irene Paulson said so and we did it for her. But because we’ve recognized our need for Jesus and have been changed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Grandma died on Monday. That night, when I put my five-year-old daughter to bed, I told her that Great-Grandma Paulson had died. Betsy cried a little bit and then, as most five-year-old do, she had some questions. In the weeks leading up to Grandma’s death, Betsy had a lot of questions about God, Satan, Heaven, hell, the cross, and Jesus. The things she is learning in Sunday School and Wednesday night kids church is starting to resonate with her and she’s starting to understand the gospel. Monday night, after talking about it, Betsy asked, “Will I go to Heaven?” And I again told her what we all need to do to go to Heaven, as we had been talking about the previous weeks. Betsy then decided she wanted to confess her sin and ask Jesus into her heart. I think Grandma would be delighted to know that the day she saw the face of her Savior in Heaven, her great-granddaughter accepted Christ and started her own faith journey. And that is the miracle of the gospel! It’s something a young child can understand and recognize their need for Jesus. And yet the gospel is so complex that a relationship with Jesus can be carried out until you’re 91 years old! Even at 91, Grandma was still coming to church to worship with her friends and family. She was still learning by attending Bible study. She was still spending time with God by reading the Bible and having prayer time. She was STILL chasing hard after the heart of God. So what JOY she must have experienced when she was ushered into Heaven and heard what Jesus said in Matthew 25:21, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

My last day with Grandma

My grandma died today. Just typing those words makes me teary-eyed. But even through all the tears and though I will miss her, today was still a good day.

Yesterday my grandma went to the church she has attended for, oh, I don't know...over 50 years, just like she did every Sunday. Toward the end of the service, she didn't feel well and quickly fell quite ill. Her oldest son took her straight from church to the ER. The problem was diagnosed and was irreversible. It fell on her children to let the rest of the family know that Grandma had only a day or two left on our earth.

So today, many of her loved ones gathered at her hospital bedside to say goodbye. Yesterday she could talk and was able to speak on the phone to her brother, a grand-daughter, and maybe some others. She had several visitors yesterday. Today she was too weak to talk but was awake most of the day. Her breathing was labored and she would breathe faster when the pain increased.

I was at the hospital for a couple of hours. During those short hours, there were 38 family members present. Her children, several grandchildren, and a few great-grandchildren came to say goodbye. We kinda sorta took over the hallway. At times there were many people in her room. Other times, just a couple. Most of the time I was there she was aware of who was talking to her, her eyes fixed on their face.

I stroked her shoulder and told her I loved her. She was able to kind of breath out/sigh "love you" back to me. They were the last words she spoke to me. I knew those words were true the entire 45 years of my life she was there for. Besides my mom, no one in my life as ever expressed verbally that they love me as much as my grandma did. She told me all the time, pretty much every time I saw her. And I never doubted her words.

My mom read Psalm 23 to her, through tears, because Grandma loved Scripture so much and it was a huge part of who she was. I'm so glad that the last place she went before she got so sick was her beloved church. She got to spend time with her church family one last time. She was the oldest congregant of her church, at 91 years of age.

As I stood by her bedside today, I didn't know what to say, so I sang. I told her I would sing to her the songs I sing to my daughter every night at bedtime. So I sang these words:
Oh, how I love Jesus
Oh, how I love Jesus
Oh, how I love Jesus
Because he first loved me
I cried through most of that little chorus and my voice cracked quite a bit. But then I was able to continue, without crying much.

Then I sang to her another song I sing to my daughter most every night.
God is so good
God is so good
God is so good
He's so good to me.

He loves me so
He loves me so
He loves me so
He's so good to me.

Then I sang the chorus to my favorite hymn, How Great Thou Art. When I began to sing that her eyes opened wider and her mouth was moving like she was trying to say the words. I was so emotional that I couldn't think of the first verse, so I started at the chorus:
Then sings my soul
My Savior God to thee
How great thou art
How great thou art.
Then sings my soul
My Savior God to thee
How great thou art
How great thou art.
My uncle, Howard, was the only other person in the room at the time, and so he started in at the second verse. I joined in and we stood by her bed, a duet with a nice baritone voice and my crackly/crying voice. It was a very special moment. My uncle and I told her how important her faith was in our lives and that her love for Jesus was her legacy.

Right before I left the hospital to go back home, I went back to her bedside one last time to say goodbye. I just stood next to her, looking at her, her eyes barely open. Her breathing was quite labored. I stroked her face, told her I loved her. She couldn't respond. I told her to rest and the final words I said were, "Sweet Grandma." Because that's what she was. So sweet. Never said a bad word about anyone. Loved Jesus with her whole heart. Treasured her church family, her time reading the Bible, praying, and never wanted anything more than her family to love Jesus. That's all she ever wanted.

She slipped away to Jesus a few hours after I left the hospital. She's pain-free and with Grandpa, who left us 22 years ago. Her stomach issues are gone. Her aches and pains are gone. Her diabetes is gone. She saw the face of her Savior today. And that's what makes our sad day a good day.

Happy retirement, Dad!

* Disclaimer: all info in this blog post is from my recollection so it might not be 100% accurate. I'm sure I will be corrected if it's not.

My dad grew up in a small farming community, raised in a family with nine kids and his father was a dairy farmer himself. Being one of nine and living on a farm, you don't really have a choice but to become a hard worker. So that's what my dad has been his whole life - a hard worker.

When my dad was a teenager, he got a job working at Junkans Motors - a small local business that repaired farm machinery. He was a Senior in High School and he walked up to Dick Junkans and asked if he had any part-time work. No application, no interview. Dick said he did and Dad started right away. The summer after he graduated, Dick said, "You're sticking around, right?" Dad said he had planned to if he could work full-time that summer. The next school year he commuted to college and put in a semester or two. After that, he was a full-time workin' man. At the ripe old age of 20, my dad married my mom. He needed a few days off for the wedding and a quick honeymoon getaway. It was probably the first time he had asked for time off since he had started at Junkans. His boss told him he could have the time off, but he needed to find someone to cover his work. He asked his friend, Kevin Monson, to fill in. When Dad came back to work, Kevin stayed. 

A few years later, my dad thought it might be time to look for a different job. He landed an interview at a local food processing plant (then called Land O' Lakes). My dad thinks that somehow his boss found out about the interview and that he was looking for a different job. It is a small town, so that's completely possible. So I believe it was the next day (or shortly thereafter) when Dick approached him and said something to the effect of, "I'm looking to sell my business. Do you want to buy it?" And so that's what happened. In their early 20s, my dad and Kevin decided to buy Junkans Motors and go into business together. They took on a third partner, one of their co-workers named Lawrence Hanson. Except no one called him Lawrence. His nickname was Squirrel (for reasons unknown to me) and I didn't know that his "real name" wasn't Squirrel until I was a teenager myself.

A newspaper clipping from 1975. My dad is the second one on the left. His name is spelled wrong. Next to him is his oldest brother. Then there's Squirrel (his last name is also spelled wrong) and Kevin is on the far right.

Since there was no one with the last name Junkans in the business picture any longer, the business was renamed. The three co-owners had last names of MonSON, HanSON, and PaulSON. I believe they had a contest to rename the business. A local woman submitted the name "Son Equipment." If you said it fast enough, it kind of ran together and sounded like "Sunny Quipment." Amongst my family and many of the Monson family, it became referred to as "The Shop." 

A new building, just on the edge of town, right on the highway, was built and it became my second childhood home. I spent hours at Son Equipment. My dad ran the garage part of the business (the shop), Squirrel ran the parts counter, and Kevin ran the office and sales part of the business. That's not to say you wouldn't find Kevin back in the shop or my dad in the office...they both pitched in with all aspects of the business.

My entire childhood my dad pretty much worked a 50-60 hour work week. He worked every other Saturday. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights every day. He fixed on tractors and farm equipment. Many times he drove out to farms and fields to repair a broken down piece of machinery that a farmer had tried to get going but needed help. 

My dad's hands were pretty much always stained from grease and motor oil. He smelled like "shop" when he came home. His work boots were a fixture in our entryway. The Shop was a big part of our lives, of course. Squirrel eventually retired, selling his part of the business to Dad and Kevin, leaving them as the sole owners. It was a good fit as a partnership, Kevin being a bit more of a risk-taker than my dad, my dad being the one to always carefully weigh the pros and cons of business decisions. And both of them were willing to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of running a small local business, serving their community they raised their families in.

In the 1980s, small family dairy farms were struggling as the farming industry was taking a big financial hit. So in the early 90s, the business switched over from farm machinery sales and repair to used car sales and repair. And the business name changed from Son Equipment to Son Auto. We still called it The Shop. 

As a teenager, I did odd jobs around Son - mostly washing cars, getting them ready to go out on the car lot. I showed that pressure washer who was boss. I vacuumed out the interior, I scraped off window tint, I ran through a checklist to make sure all radios and blinkers and windows were in working order, and I checked oil and windshield fluid levels. Sometimes I drove all around the countryside, picking up parts at other stores and garages. One time I was sent to a town about 25 miles away, in a pickup truck without a speedometer that didn't work, to haul back a piece of farm machinery. I think it was a disk. It was wide and took up the whole lane and then some. The farmer hooked it up to the pickup truck and off I headed back. But the thing swayed so much that the pickup truck would start to rock if I got going too fast. But I had no idea where the threshold of beginning to sway was because I had no speedometer. I held up traffic for miles on stretches of two-lane road where I couldn't be passed on the highway. I got a lot of honks. I don't think I could go much over 25 mph and it well over an hour to get back to Son. As a teenager, this was a highly embarrassing and stressful situation I found myself in. One guy passed me and as he drove by, he mocked me by swaying his shoulders back and forth, rocking like I was inside that pickup truck.

Once I got my license, I always brought my car to Son to wash it. I was out of college before I drove through a car wash for the first time. I was married before I ever took my car anywhere to get an oil change - my dad always did it for me in the shop. It has been quite handy and fortunate to have a dad that knows "all things cars" and can fix it. And if he can't fix it, my sisters, husband, and brothers-in-law call him and ask if the price quote we got from another garage is reasonable or inflated.

And so it went for many years - Dad and Kevin selling and fixing cars at Son Auto. They tried to be as fair as possible to employees and customers, helping as many people as they could. My dad would get early morning calls and phone calls on Sunday at the house from people needing him to figure out their car problem from over the phone. And he could do it. Sometimes it was someone broken down on the side of the road and they needed rescuing. Sometimes it was a brother or friend who was working on a car and needed some advice. Dad got good at doing diagnostics without even looking at the vehicle. So much so that when my husband and I were dating, we were at a birthday party at my parents' house and he wanted to ask my dad for permission to marry me. His plan was to use his Jeep as a ruse to get my dad out of the house for a private conversation. He told my dad that he wanted him to look at his Jeep because he was having an issue with the air vent blower not working correctly. My dad asked him a couple of questions then told him what the problem was and what needed to be done to fix it, all without leaving the living room. And thwarting my husband's plan that day.

Eventually, the business sold and fixed speed boats and pontoon boats, in addition to cars. A couple more locations were added. Then they opened a couple auto parts store around the area. Several years ago Dad and Kevin were approached by a friend and local businessman who wanted to buy their business. The business was sold and they stayed on as employees, having a boss for the first time since the mid-1970s. My dad had his very first performance review (insert an eye roll by me). Without going into specifics, shortly after the business was sold, circumstances out of their control changed. Kevin left to find another job and it was the strangest thought to me that my dad and his business partner for almost 40 years wouldn't be working together any longer. Change is hard. At least for me, it is.

Another change happened when the "auto parts" part of the business was sold off and my dad went along with it. He moved to another store in a different town. It was another change that was a bit hard to get used to...knowing I would never be in the old Son Auto - the building I spent hours and hours of my childhood in. Knowing that Dad wouldn't have access to a shop to fix cars in, no access to trailers and skid steers and other equipment used to get things done. Again, change is hard. Eventually, Dad returned to a job back in his hometown, just down the road from the old Son Auto, at another location of the parts store he worked for. He no longer had any association with what was Son Auto. It was a new business name, with a new owner, with a new business plan.

Dad and grandkid #6 at his job in 2014.

Dad and grandkid #7 at his job in 2017.

My dad is the hardest working person I know. And today is his last day of work. He is retiring after working five days one week, six days the next, for about 50 years. I'm sure that there were times during his time as a business owner that he wanted to quit. But so many people were relying on him and Kevin. I'm sure there were a ton of hard-to-deal-with situations I never knew anything about - things that kept him awake at night. I'm sure Dad and Kevin didn't always agree on everything. But they changed with the times, pivoted their business, served the community, employed many people through the years - all without college degrees. They put in the long hard hours as business owners and made a lot of sacrifices. I'm so proud of my dad. He is one of the most fair, reasonable, responsible men I will ever know and I'm so grateful he raised me and worked hard for me, my mom, and my sisters.

My kids and my dad on his last day of work. I decided spur of the moment to bring him balloons and lunch to celebrate (and because I always need closure on life changes).

Enjoy your retirement, Dad! Your kids and grandkids are excited that you now get to sleep in, nap when you want, come to ALL the activities, and spend more time with us. When you're not doing yard work, working on home improvements, working up at the cabin, or helping us with projects at our homes, that is.

Oh, and P.S. my dad was at our house a few days ago and replaced a couple of parts on one of our cars. Some things never change.