🚨 Long Post Below 🚨
2020 continues to wreak havoc as we lost my Maternal Grandmother to Alzheimer’s this past Saturday.
We had a nice zoom “service” to celebrate her life tonight knowing she is in a much better place and reunited with Grandpa John who passed 8 months ago. Grandma Ames was the 1st person who taught me the “competitive edge” when it came to playing cards and board games. This edge was that she would win at all costs even if that meant going “outside the rules” LOL.
While it was always in good fun, if you beat her in Hearts or Sorry, there would be a rematch & then another & so on until she won. I can remember being a youth staying up way past my bedtime bc Grandma hadn’t won yet. I truly believe this is the root of my competitive nature as I couldn’t wait to go to Grandmas and try and beat her at what ever the game of the day happened to be.
Later in life, she no doubt fueled the passion for my entrepreneurial spirit after growing up around her extremely successful Amway business she built from the ground up.
She was a true believer in family, history and traditions. She paid for our entire family to fly to Sweden, Denmark, & Norway to meet our last living relatives from many limbs up the family tree. She would send out a Christmas “card” that was a double sided legal size paper filled with pictures of every family member from that year.
It was the highlight of the season. Before we could eat Thanksgiving dinner, each place had an upside down plate so you had to choose your seat very wisely. These plates were painted with 12 days of Christmas and we had to sing the entire song before we could eat. The fear of getting the 1st day plate still haunts me : )
She loved Eagles, a good joke ( as long as she wasn’t the butt of it ), Diet Coke, Purdue, Fox News, God & The Methodist Church, playing the piano/signing, gardening & being the light/life of the party. Grandma, thank you for teaching me that loyalty, love, respect, giving back and hard work will take you heights you could never imagine in life, bc God knows the world could use a little more of that right now.
RIP Sandra “Sandy” J. Ames you will be missed, but never forgotten