Betty Jull, Oct 24 RIP

I used to send her cards. Not addressed to Betty Jull, but simply addressed to Grandma. She would tease me saying that she didn't know how they ever got to her without her name on it. It was Betty Jull who taught me the importance of names.
Looking back, I can see that everything I ever needed to know about what it means to be family, I learned from Julls. From Barb and Gary and Frank, and especially my Grandma Jull, Betty.
Technically speaking, I wasn't her grandson. We weren't blood related at all. We weren't even legally related. But I never doubted, not for a single moment of my life, that she was my grandmother and I was her grandson. She had a gift for making you feel loved.
My favourite childhood memories revolve around holidays when our house would be bursting with grandparents. Great times full of great stories of forgotten stuffings and misplaced teeth, of phonograph records and kitchen tables cleared for card games.
It was through cards that Betty taught me it's OK to curse at loved ones. If they steal your trick you can call them all sorts of names and trust me, my Grandma Jull called me all sorts of names.
But what she really taught me is that making someone feel special is in the details. It is often the smallest thing that means the most. Like how she never forgot to bake my favourite cookies at Christmas, just because I liked them. Or how she kept toys for me in a special hidden room in the basement. Or how she saved Oor Willie comics, because she thought that I might like them. No matter what, she took the time to make me feel special.
I live on the other side of the country now and on my first road trip out here a friend and I had an old Datsun that we painted to look like a race car: complete with racing stripes, numbers, and sponsors logos. We needed a name for the car and nothing captured her spirit quite like Betty. So in yellow and orange fluorescent on the rear quarter panel, we wrote her name: Betty.
I wanted to call her Betty because it made me feel connected to a her. Sometimes I would be asked if Betty was an old girlfriend and it was then that I felt connected to her youth and a place long since lost that was full of dancing and singing at the Palais.
But mostly, I wanted to call her Betty because my grandma taught me about the little things that count the most. And the littlest thing that counted the very most with me was every Easter my grandma brought me a chocolate egg with my name written on it in white icing and nothing ever made me feel quite so special as that.