— The call came in the middle of the night on April 17 at an hour when hardly any call ever brings good news. “Little Grandma” Lenora West, the matriarch of Risa’s family, had passed away in Indiana. She was 96 years young.

 The news wasn’t shocking. She had fallen a few months back and broken her hip and, as happens so many times with that many years earned, one by one the dominoes started to fall.

 Only a few hours before she passed, Lenora was asking Jesus to help her. The family that was by her side reassured her that He was waiting on her, ready to help her in any way He could. She drifted off to sleep, and when nurses checked on her not two hours later, she had passed on.

 I shared back over the holidays about our visiting “Little Grandma” at Christmas and the kind of woman she was. I admired her on several different levels. A tiny thing, she was born into a Kentucky family that didn’t have much and ended up with even less as it navigated The Great Depression.

 Even with that, it was rare to not find her smiling or looking for an opening to “pick on” someone in pure, joyful jest.

 She shared stories of how the family would use deeper sections of the cold mountain streams that flowed around their home to keep milk and such cold. Her resourcefulness would be important as she would become a wife and mother of five boys in rural south Indiana. She never, ever complained, about anything — because she was always thankful for what she did have.

 I guess coming up in the era in which she did taught one how to be thankful for the little things.

 Yes, I know that Indiana is technically Yankee land. But trust me – the Hoosiers from Lenora’s family are far more rooted in the South than anything from the North.

 She never needed or wanted much outside of a roof over her head and just enough vittles to make a meal from — and I’m convinced she could make a feast from little more than some flour, gravy and rhubarb cuttings. In fact, I’ve seen her do it.

 Rhubarb. I can’t tell you how many times we talked about rhubarb, about what an odd plant it is, which parts of the plant you can eat and can’t (turns out the stalks are edible, but the leaves are poisonous), where it will and won’t grow, or whether it is a vegetable or a fruit.

 Along the years, Lenora learned how to make a rhubarb pie that was, in a word, amazing. The sweet tartness of the filling was in perfect balance with the buttery crust. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that with a dollop of Cool Whip on top of it, it was as good as anything I’ve ever eaten.

 We drove to Indiana and got there in time for the visitation, which was basically a family reunion. Many hugs, smiles, and tears. Like I said before, her passing wasn’t shocking. But no one is truly prepared for the finality of losing someone special — especially one that has been the anchor of her family for so long.

 The next morning, Marion Rose and her daddy sang “Amazing Grace” at the funeral, the same song we sang for her on our December visit. “Well,” she said then after we played it, grinning broadly, “that was all right.”

 I look at the world today, at all the hustle and bustle, the running here and there, the instantaneous global communication, the everything all the time, and then I look at the life lived by Lenora West and I truly have to question if we’ve done ourselves many favors with all of that.

 She preferred simple things, like pretty flowers. She had them growing all around her home and on her front porch, and she always took time to tend them. Lenora just seemed to have a touch with them to make them bloom beautifully — the same touch she had with the most important thing she had in her existence: her family.

 I think we’d all do well to learn a lesson or two from “Little Grandma.” Never want too much for yourself and learn how to make do with what you have. Don’t sweat the small stuff and, when you get down to it, just about all of it is small. Slow down a little bit. Don’t be afraid to use a switch if it is needed and if someone gives you an opening, go ahead and pick on them — but do both out of love.

 But more than anything, you tend your garden and your family with same approach. Plant the right seeds at the right times, tend them with a caring hand, bend down to pull a weed or two when necessary and always take time to enjoy them in bloom while you can. At the end of the day, nothing is more important than family.

 While it’s never easy saying goodbye, it does my heart good to know that the seeds of life sown from her gardens will be continue to be planted and nurtured amongst all who knew and loved Lenora, “Little Grandma” West, for generations to come.

 Up to and including the Georgia “rhubarbs” in our own family.