This lady. She was my grandma, and she helped raise me. I lived with her until I was 28. She was quite the spitfire of a woman that you really didn’t want to piss off. She had this way with words that would let you know without really saying it, but she wasn’t scared to tell you about yourself either. 😂 She chased me out the door a time or two waving a wooden spoon… She chased many boyfriends of mine out of the house, and she told one in particular, “You belong at the Salvation Army! Get the hell out of here!” 😂 She spent many hours of her days carting me and my friends wherever it is we wanted to go back in high school, and tolerated me blasting the Backstreet Boys from the time I got home from school until I decided to go to bed. I definitely did not get my lack of patience from her! She was the glue that held our extended family together. Getting together for the holidays and birthdays was immensely important to her, so she always made it happen. She hated milk and loved to make me eat canned beets as a kid. 🤮 She had Alzheimer’s… but she lived a long, full, beautiful life. She loved her family with her every breath and heartbeat, and now she’s able to see her daughter Aunt Becky, grandpa Jim, both of her sisters, and her “mother and daddy” once again. ❤️ Fly high grandma. You were a true Patriarch!

 I’m gonna miss sitting in her lap and looking at our bird book trying to identify the birds at the many bird feeders she kept along the glass walls of the living room and dining room. I’m gonna miss her trying to kick me out of her room because she went up there to smoke away from me because she didn’t want me to get the secondhand smoke, but I was so attached to her hip she could never get me out, I wanted to spend time with her too bad. In all things I’m glad I got to see her one last time. Even though she couldn’t talk and could barely keep her eyes open, I got to hold her hand and stroke her hair and tell her how much I loved her and how much her family loved her, and tell her that we know she loves all of us and that it’s okay if she wants to pass away. She lived 94 long years. I know exactly where I was when she passed away and I like to think she passed because she knew I was safe and being taken care of. That morning there was a beautiful sunrise with a gorgeous rainbow and I just know it was her. I just know it. 4/4


Eventually my shoes and clothes got soaked through from walking around the tall grass in the rain, so I went and sat in my car and read through her entire Facebook. I made it all the way to the bottom. I sat in my car and cried till I couldn’t anymore. I cried so hard I almost threw up. Even though she’s had Alzheimer’s for years now and we knew it was coming it’s not any easier than I thought it would be. I would give anything for her to make me oatmeal for breakfast again and watch the figure skaters in the Winter Olympics just one more time. I’m gonna miss laughing with her when Sampson sat at the slider door with a chipmunk in his mouth waiting to be let inside because he brought a gift for us (it was only dead sometimes). I’m gonna miss how she tucked me into bed every night, even though I could never keep my room clean and I’d have to clear a path for her to walk to my bed. She would read me stories any time I asked, and she even taught me how to read. 3/4


When I got the house though, it was locked up tight. The window I used to slide into the basement through had been locked, but the hole I poked in the screen years ago was still there. It was a super rainy day outside and I saw my cat tigger through the window so I opened it up and pushed the screen out, grabbed the cat, and went to the slider door for grandma to let me in where she said “how on earth did you get outside?” and I just laughed and said I went through the window, I thought I was so funny and sneaky. And that’s when I cried. When I realized I couldn’t get into my house. It was our house. The house where I learned how to walk and how to talk, how to say grandma Lou Lou instead of grandma woo woo. So I sat on the back porch in the rain. The pool I learned how to swim in had plants growing on top of the pool cover, the lawn was overgrown, the garden we used to keep together filled with weeds. The catnip we planted for the kitties, tiger and Sampson was still growing strong. And the ash tray she kept by the slider door where she used to sit and watch me play outside or swim while she smoked was still there, like it had never been moved from where she put it. The bunny statues that I loved were still sitting on the bricks next to the shed, still in the same place they were the last time I had played with them years ago. 2/4 


It’s so hard to find the words. I have so much love for the woman who raised me and my mother. It takes a village to raise a child, and my great grandma, Louise Denney, or as I called her “grandma woo woo”, took great pride in raising all her children, her children's children, and me. I spent nearly every single day with her until my mom found love and we moved to California. Every Wednesday was our day. I would get all buckled up in the back of her Oldsmobile and we’d go to the salon where I’d play with the toys they had and sit in the salon chair next to her while she got her hair done, then with her hair all done up we’d go next door to the family fare (which she refused to call anything but d&w) and we’d go grocery shopping together, then when we got home I’d help her out them away and then she would give me a dollar for putting the silverware away from the dishwasher. There was nothing I loved doing more than spending the day running errands with my grandma, and she loved to bring me along. When I got the call from my mom saying she had passed, so soon after we had all just lost grandpa Carl, her son in law, I was in shock. I didn’t even cry. I fell back asleep and when I woke back up the only thing I could think of doing was going to the house she raised me in and walking around in it and just reliving all my memories like marching into the kitchen where my mom and her were talking with mr potato head glasses on my face laughing up a storm because I thought I was so funny. A silly goose as everyone called me. 1/4 


OBITUARY

Louise Denney

August 31, 1927 – November 12, 2021

Reyers North Valley Chapel

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