Betty Wolfgang, 1929-2014

On Friday, August 8, Grammy Wolfgang passed away. Any obituary never does the person service, of course. I wrote a few things on Facebook, first when I posted the photo you see above:

Grammy Wolfgang passed away. This is my favorite photo I took of her, shot on May 5, 2000. I believe this was just after I got a 20mm lens for my film SLR, and I ran over to her and leaned in close to take this photo. Everything about this shot captures so much of who she was and what she liked — doing cross stitch, wearing a sweatshirt with mountains on it, and a smile on her face. I remember that the moment after snapping this photo was equally worth a photo, but I wasn’t prepared: I had to lean in so close to fill the frame with such a wide lens that it startled her; she jumped and had a good laugh at what I had done! She’ll be missed a lot.

After the service on the 15th I wrote a little more:

Today was Grammy’s funeral service. It was difficult, of course, and even now I struggle to figure out what to say. My brother Jim sent along some words, noting that it’s hard to think of Grammy and Pop-pop not being together. I guess I see something like that, too: Pop-pop’s been gone for a long time but Grammy was still here, so it was sort of like Pop-pop was still here, too. So, losing Grammy is a hard change, but I’m glad she could go while still at home and independent.

Parting thought: everything good I know about our family came from Grammy and Pop-pop. It seems sort of crazy to attribute so much to them… but that’s the level of impact they had and I’m honored to have known them.

Pop-pop (Lloyd) passed away on August 27, 1999, just after their 49th wedding anniversary (August 10).