On Saturday we received the sad news that Great Grandma Kiyoko had passed away. GG Kiyoko was Papa Cal’s mother and a staple of our visits to Kauai. She was a part of every visit and always loved seeing the girls. I can still hear her voice every time just saying over and over: “Oh my, so beautiful!” and then Christine would often say something like “And they are smart too, Grandma!” and she would say, “Yes, yes, but on my, so beautiful!”
GG Kiyoko was always admiring our beautiful little girls...
Both girls met Great Grandma when they were about six months old – Maile on December 30th, 2009 and Lauren on June 27th, 2013…
Great Grandma Murashige, Mommy and Me
Great Grandma Kiyoko, Mommy, Maile (almost 4) and Lauren (almost 6 months)
Great Grandma Kiyoko lived in a assisted living home – but seeing the old people needing help around never phased Maile and Lauren. They always went right up and gave GG a big hug and spent some time with her before racing off to the pool. The pool was definitely their favorite part of the visit. For Daddy it was always a little bit too cold (for some reason it was built in the shadows of the building or something – never seemed to get direct sunlight and was always freezing!), but the girls never cared – they absolutely loved being in that pool.
It's kind of hard to get a 1 year old and a great grandma to both look at the camera at the same time...
When we were talking about GG and the girls on Saturday night, Christine was remembering how on our last visit, GG had moved to a more directly assisted part of the home and Maile noticed that GG’s slipper had fallen off, so she got right down and helped her put it back on. Needless to say Maile took the news particularly hard. Lauren was mainly concerned that Mommy was upset, but Maile felt it and was quite sad. She sat down and wrote a card about GG…
Maile's note to GG 🙁
We then talked about how we could remember GG and we decided that we would think of her whenever we went swimming because we love to swim and swimming was a bit part of our visits to see her. That felt right to all of us.
We'll always remember GG when we are having fun in the pool...
We love you Great Grandma Kiyoko and we will miss you always!
