Gertrude Eva Smith-Wilkins May 10,1925 to Oct. 11, 2016

Early this morning my family said goodbye to a special person in our lives. My grandma Eve has been a great influence in my life. We were fortunate to live close to her while growing up. This allowed us to spend time with her and really get to know her. She loved to travel. She has probably been around the world a couple of times. I always looked forward to the post cards and letters she would send from the various places she would travel to. She didn’t always have an easy life. She was one of 12 children and grew up in Ohio. When she was 20 years old her father passed away leaving many younger siblings at home. The state of Ohio placed many of her younger sisters into state custody because they didn’t believe that her mother could raise all those children. My grandma took in her little sister, Great Aunt Kay. Aunt Kay lived with her for many years. She married my grandpa Tiffany in 1943. After having two children they divorced when my dad was a kid. She remarried to John Stubstad and had my Aunt. She later divorced and married 2 more times. I thought I was lucky because I had 4 grandpas. I now realize these were probably very trying times in her life. I remember spending time with her in her home. We often would get to spend a couple of weeks with her during the summer. On one of these visits I remember her tucking me into bed and asking me if I had said my prayers. I was pretty young at the time and was a little confused. I knew we said prayer at meal time and as a family before we went to bed but I had never said my own prayer before bed. She took the time to teach me a very important lesson about personal prayer. I will always be so grateful for the faith of this woman. I loved going to grandmas. She kept an immaculate home. I felt at peace while I visited her. We would spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at her home. She would make a huge feast. We all loved her homemade rolls. After dinner she loved playing games. The most recent one I remember playing with her was dominos. Although I think her favorite was scrabble but because of the competitive nature of the game it was banned from our family functions. While I was a student at BYU I took a family history class. One of my assignments was to talk to a grandparent about their history. Every chance I could I asked my grandma about her life. One day she handed me something that I will always cherish. She gave me a copy of her testimony and her conversion story along with a few of her favorite scriptures. It wasn’t long after that that she started to lose her memory. I’m grateful that I was able to learn more about her before it was too late to ask those questions. The last 10 years has been a struggle. She slowly lost her memory until she no longer recognized who we were. I still enjoyed my visits with her even though I knew she would not remember them. She was an amazing person and I’m lucky that I got to call her grandma. She passed with my dad and mom by her side along with most of my siblings. I didn’t get to be there with her for her last moments but am grateful for being able to see her this past summer. I’m comforted to know that through the gospel of Christ I will get to see her again. The next time I see her I know she’ll recognize me and I know it will be a joyous meeting.

My visit with grandma in March this year. I Didn’t know my husband was taking pictures.I didn’t get any pictures with her when I was there in August.