By Tabitha Yates 
Some children are blessed with the very best grandmothers who seem to shine as bright as the heavens. Mine were lucky enough to get a star, Virginia Star, to be exact.
A life in the Army meant that my husband, our three children, and I were always separated from her by many miles. But I have never known such a remarkable person who could bridge the gap and close the distance like Maw-Maw could.
She was terrified of flying, but she’d hop on that plane so fast to get to “her babies.” There was never a birthday, holiday, or event forgotten, nor did she ever miss a chance to let her kids and grandkids know how much she cared for them. She loved them to the moon and back, as she would often say. A plaque hung over her bed that said so. Even as her daughter-in-law, I knew the place I had in her heart, regardless of the place I had in her son’s life. You see, she had two sons and miscarried her third child, who she swore was a girl. When we met, she told me God had finally given her the daughter she was missing, and she loved me as her own from that day on.
Technology is a beautiful tool for connecting loved ones separated by distance. But the good Lord knows social media was not created for the likes of my mother-in-law, the least tech-savvy person I have ever met. In fact, she was known to call her sons and try to have them “fix” her internet over the phone when it would go out. I would secretly giggle and be immensely entertained when she would forget her password to her email or Facebook account, and my husband would sit there, desperately trying to be patient, typing and deleting every possible variation of her cat’s names and random years until he finally hit the magical combination. Eventually, we bought her a password book as a gift.
Still, God also knows the gift that technology was for our military family. There wasn’t a Christmas morning when Maw-Maw wasn’t on video chat watching our oldest to our youngest run down the stairs with glee and cheering as she watched them open their gifts. Every last kid would call her with any piece of news from losing their first tooth to winning their ball game, and from anywhere you stood in the house, you could hear her resoundingly tone-deaf sing-song voice shouting, “Yaaaaaay!!” And I just know they felt like the most important people in the world because no detail or conversation was too small to Maw-Maw.
While many children with long distance grandparents don’t have the lasting memories that my children do, she made double the effort to be in their lives in any way she could. I would wake up to my youngest’s high-pitched voice video chatting with her, telling her nothing and everything about his day. My oldest would laugh hysterically as she put crazy filters on herself and Maw-Maw, taking screenshots to chuckle at later. My middle son was “her boy.” He is the miniature version of his dad, and even though he was often up to mischief, he could do no wrong in Maw-Maw’s eyes.
When we got the unexpected phone call on the last day of our winter vacation a few years back that our beloved Mother and Maw-Maw was on life support in the ICU, we raced home to empty our car and pack it back up for the 20-hour road trip to get to her. She had crossed the miles many times to come to us, and now it was our turn. She was waiting for us. I know she was.
We each said goodbye in our own ways. I made sure she heard each of her babies’ voices telling her they loved her to the moon and back, though the normal excitement at talking to Maw-Maw was replaced with the sudden dawning that it would be the last time . . . or would it?
One particularly dark night, I stepped outside to see my daughter staring up at the sky, speaking aloud but unintelligibly. As I approached to hug her, a faint smile appeared on her lips, as she explained, “I’m talking to the brightest star in Heaven. That’s Maw-Maw.”
by Vicki Bahr 
by Jen Feener 
