As I sat down to consider what to share about my grandmother, it was hard to begin to whittle down the flood of memories and stories that came to my mind.  And as I spoke with family and friends about their own memories and their experiences, I quickly became overwhelmed.  How do you capture an entire life on two pages of paper?  How can you boil down 86 years to just 10 minutes?  I came to realize that there is no way to fully describe grandma or her impact on all of our lives.  Instead, I began thinking about what was most important to her, what she valued, and how she chose to spend her time.   

There’s one very important thing you need to know about Tillie, something that is probably the most foundational element of the woman she would become.  She was very, very … German.  And the Germans are a tough people.  They work hard and they’re a pretty serious group.  And grandma’s was a very German childhood.  In a family with no boys, Tillie Berkhardt was as strong and productive a ranch hand as any son could have been.  She milked cows, rode horses, moved cattle, mended fences, and wrangled rattlesnakes on occasion.  She lost her mother when she was just a very little girl and she loved to work with her father.  Their relationship was built around their shared labors. 

Family and work were so intertwined in her world that it’s not surprising then that when she married her husband Lloyd, they would not only share a life and four children, but their work as well.  They began working together on a farm outside of Reliance and worked together again when they took over managing the Farmers Union Coop in Presho years later.  Together they purchased a grocery store and worked together there and at the clothing store next door.  Their children were also a part of their work life - each spending years and countless hours at the stores.  Husman’s Grocery has always been the very epitome of a family business – and that continues now under Junior’s care. 

She took great pride in her clothing stores, the one in Presho and the dress shop in Chamberlain.  She loved being a business woman at a time when many women didn’t work outside of the house.  It was through her work that she related to people – her loyal customers and those that she worked with.  They were some of her closest friends, and it is wonderful to see so many of you here today. 

Something else that was very German about my grandmother was the way she showed her love.  Over her years, Grandma became more open about showing affection, especially for her grandchildren and then her great-grandchildren.  And while she wasn’t stingy with words of affection or pride, the way that grandma most easily and frequently showed her love for people  … was through food.  It came so naturally to her that over the years we all learned to translate grandma’s words.  Whenever anyone arrived at her house almost the first words out of her mouth were, “Have you eaten?” which really meant, “I’m so glad to have you here.”  And even if we said, “yes, I just finished up a 6 course meal, I’m so full I think I’m about to burst,” her second line always was, “Are you hungry?”  She couldn’t help herself.  She wanted to feed and nurture and love us the best way she knew how.  So in anticipation of family gatherings she would spend hours and hours preparing her famous caramel rolls, timed out with great care so they were still warm when the first of us arrived.  And often, even if you had just eaten and you were quite full, you accepted a caramel roll … which would frequently arrive with maybe … just a little ham sandwich … and a bit of potato salad. 

You see, Grandma did some translating, too: When someone said, “oh my gosh, this is delicious,” she heard, “I love you too.” 

But her caring for others through food wasn’t just restricted to her family.  No one left the Husman household unfed.  And there were many visitors to grandma’s house.  Most were the friends of her kids and us grandkids.  Each of them were welcomed with, “Have you eaten?  Are you hungry?”  And they all must have learned to translate Tillie’s special language because many of you, in sharing your condolences, have said that Lloyd and Tillie felt like grandparents to you, as well.  And fortunately, grandma’s kitchen, like her love, could always welcome one more.  In fact, Nicole was remembering a story from when she was younger.  A new highway patrolman had moved into town with his family.  They didn’t have much money and it was apparent that Christmas that year was going to be a little lean.  Although they were strangers, Grandma and Grandpa snuck up to their house and left a few bags of food so they could have a nice Christmas dinner.  If there was one thing grandma couldn’t abide, it was someone with an empty plate.

That’s probably why every meal at Tillie’s house was a feast.  Any Sunday with family was excuse enough to prepare a Turkey dinner fit for royalty.  The menu was always planned with careful attention to the guest list so that everyone’s favorites were on the table.  Pea salad always made an appearance if Nicole would be there, but the eggs had to be prepared just right so that Ryan would eat it.  I personally never sat down to a meal without my own favorite - green bean casserole.  But there were so many more, frog-eye salad, potato salad, two kinds of cranberry relish (jellied and homemade), corn, potatoes, onion dressing, jello salad, were just a sampling of the ways that she made everyone feel special.  Everyone knew that they were important to grandma by what she served. 

Grandma ran her table with all the precision of an air traffic controller.  She hated to sit down and would have much preferred if we had built her a podium at the corner from which she could more easily preside over the meal.  Her eagle eyes were continually surveying everyone’s plates for even the smallest vacancy.  Whenever she spotted an opening, she would begin ordering food down to fill the space.  

“Becky, slide the dressing down to Ryan; Lance, you sister needs some more potatoes; Matt, we’re going to need the gravy right behind that, there you go; Shane, I don’t think Lori got a roll, can you pass her one?  … I didn’t really mean for you to throw it.” 

You know, if we didn’t make her, I don’t think grandma would have ever sat down or eaten a bit of her own food.  She was constantly back and forth to the kitchen to replenish dishes, refill glasses, or inevitably to rescue the corn forgotten in the microwave until 3/4 of the way through the meal.  In fact many of us grew up thinking that corn was some kind of post-meal, pre-dessert specialty, and I always thought it was strange that other families ate it as part of the main course.

And as many of you recall, family meals at grandmas were always an exercise in overindulgence and the standard practice after getting up from the table was to unbutton something and slip into an involuntary food coma.  But maybe the best picture of the abundance of Grandma’s love is in a story from years earlier.

As I mentioned, Grandma lost her own mother very early so cooking was something she learned on her own and it didn’t always come naturally to her. But on one occasion, she decided she wanted to make a special treat for her husband and kids. They didn’t have much money, but she knew they loved donuts. So she asked the woman who ran the café for her recipe—which she gladly shared, and Grandma proceeded to buy the ingredients, go home to her kitchen and start making it.

What Grandma didn’t realize until she began frying up the dough was that the recipe was for a restaurant … a restaurant that would be serving dozens and dozens of donuts a day. So when the children came home after school, the entire house was a sugary wonderland.  Glazed donuts were suspended from rods, every horizontal surface in the house was covered with more donuts – and Grandma there at the counter, still making more.

It was a fitting picture—of a woman whose love for her family was so great that (like those donuts) no ordinary space could contain it and she could never quite finish serving it up for the people in her life.

As we all know, Grandma’s last years were not her best, but she was most comforted by her family and most happy when she was with them. Over her lifetime she cared for our Grandpa AND was there for so many other family members in their last days—so it was fitting that her children would surround her during her final years and especially the last few weeks, giving her as much peace and comfort as one could have under the circumstances.

And even then, though there were many things she forgot, the family got to see once more the connection between love and food, in one thing that she never forgot, even to the very end.  In fact, you may not have known that my grandmother struggled with an addiction.  She was completely helpless to resist the temptation of ice cream.

Let’s jump back to something Lacee asked me to share: a memory from when she was 10.  Grandma and Grandpa had taken her along with  Nicole and my mother to Branson, as they did with many of us over the years.  While there, they took everyone for ice cream.  An unfortunate collision between Lacee’s ice cream cone and grandma’s rear end left the cone fused to grandma’s pants.  A dumbfounded look on Lacee’s face, a laughing crowd, and a twirling Tillie finally realized she had added a new accessory to her wardrobe. It just goes to show that no matter what the circumstances, ice cream always seemed to bring Grandma joy; So even on one of her  last days when she couldn’t eat much and wasn’t very communicative, someone mentioned ice cream and she perked right up and wolfed some down.  It was a lifeline of happier times that reached into those darker moments and brought her back temporarily to be with family one last time. 

So even though  she’s now with grandpa, she has left a special part of herself here with all of us.  As I look at my family, I can see grandma lives on in all of us, and especially in her children – in my mother’s determination and strength, in Junior’s love for this town, in Lynn’s commitment to hard work, and in Lowell’s compassion for others.  And she will always remain in our memories and the countless stories that I didn’t have time to share today. 

In the Bible, there’s an image of heaven that depicts it as a great feast—a banqueting table—with a big dinner celebration. A place where there’s always enough food, and always room for another to come and eat. And I believe Grandma is at that celebration now, there with Grandpa, rejoicing in the confidence that there at the banqueting table, set with pea salad and green bean casserole, her family will someday join them, and the feast will go on forever.