Yesterday a very special lady slid from this world into the next.

And there was a REALLY big party in heaven. 😀

Skip Peterson was an incredible lady, feisty, fun-loving, and as sharp as they came. She was a veritable spiritual Library of Congress, thousands of books stored in her biological hard drive and 91 years of accumulated wisdom that she happily shared with anyone smart enough to ask, and a couple people who weren’t. 🙂 Tiny and hunched over with age, she had burning bright eyes and a free, raucous laugh.

“I don’t know anyone who did more for people than Skip,” my grandma said as we ate lunch today. And she launched into her litany of stories–a young, daring Skip racing down steep hills with her baby buggy, a competent, middle-aged Skip coming over to the farm with olive oil to get the cinder out of my Uncle Dave’s eye. Skip sitting in my grandma’s living room, doing volunteer work for my dad. Skip setting up her sewing machine next to my grandma’s and sewing my aunt’s bridesmaid dresses. Skip leaving a cake on their doorstep, no note attached, when they’d had a house fire. And decades and decades of birthday celebrations, card games, and visiting over coffee.

Skip was my grandma’s best friend. But everybody loved Skip. She was everyone’s grandma, the unchallenged village matriarch. Half the people in town had lived in her basement at some point, and emerged the better for it.

Skip’s faith in Jesus was a dauntless as she was. It was her steadfast assurance in God’s saving grace that allowed her to deal so well with losing a daughter and her husband in short succession.

“Sometimes I wonder if people think I’m hard, for not crying more,” she admitted one week at Bible study. “But I grew up in the depression, and crying didn’t fix anything. Tom (her son) says that it’s my faith, and I guess that’s it. I know that I’ll see them again.”

Skip was astonishingly healthy, living alone in her home that had cocooned so many people, until she suffered a stroke a couple weeks ago. Even then, she seemed to be making strides. She couldn’t say much more than “hello,” but she could walk, read her cards, and nod graciously at everything people said.

I went to visit her in the hospital as she was recovering, told her what an encouragement she had been to me over the years, and babbled about my kids. When it was time to leave, I said “Bye Skip! I’ll see you later.”

It struck me as I walked away that “see you later” was an odd thing to say to a 91-year-old woman who had suffered a stroke. But Skip seemed to be getting better.

A few days later, Skip suffered another massive stroke, went into a coma, and was moved into hospice. It crossed my mind that I hadn’t lived up to my word, that it didn’t seem likely that I would see her before she went.

But after I heard of her passing, it occurred to me that my farewell was actually astonishingly fitting for a woman who was so enamored with God that the barrier between this world and the next was not much more than a pesky gauze curtain, waiting to be brushed aside. I’m pretty sure she would have approved.

Bye, Skip. I’ll see you later.

You were, and are, so very loved!