Every now and again we get to be part of something wonderful that takes us out of our ordinary life and leads us somewhere special. You can't always put a name to it, but you know that being a part of such an occurrence makes you feel like you are one of the luckiest people on the earth.

I was fortunate enough to be involved in one such event a couple of weeks back. I gathered with my parents, my brothers and extended family in Sydney, Cape Breton to celebrate the life of my grandmother, Alice MacCormack, who passed on in her 100th year. It was a wonderful send off for a truly extraordinary human being. She was one of those people who never took up much space (she was all of 4'5" or so), but filled her world with love.

Gathered together with my father's family, a lifetime of memories came flooding back. Like family, memories are a funny lot; you never know what you're in for when they come rambling in. Following the funeral mass, my father and his nine siblings got to tour the home they grew up in (they have not owned the house for more than 15 years, but the present owner was gracious enough to vacate for a couple of hours for the tour... Cape Bretoners are just like that). Some of the rest of us got to tag along.

Wide-eyed with memories, we wandered through the tiny house and yard, each person lost in their own version of what the place meant to them. Each little room held special reflections for all involved; meals shared, challenges faced. The memories all held together by a single, consistent thread: the love of family.

The wake, funeral, tour of the house, and subsequent kitchen party (on the 8th floor of the Cambridge Suites Hotel, but it was still a great kitchen party) all flew by in the blink of an eye. Before long we were back to the airport or our cars for the long ride back to our lives.

During the drive home I reflected on the legacy of Alice. She was born in Big Pond, Cape Breton, two months premature and weighing a mere 2 lbs. Her mother's early labor was brought on by the traumatic stress of her husband's sudden death not a month before. It was 1914 and Alice was not expected to live. The story goes that they rowed her across the Bras D'or Lake to receive a blessing from a local bishop in hopes that it would help improve her odds. She spent the first two months of her life in a shoebox in the warming oven of the woodstove in the kitchen.

By all accounts it would take a small miracle for her to pull through. But survive she did, and she went on to bless the lives of all those who were fortunate enough to know her. She met and married my grandfather, Douglas MacCormack, and they went on to have ten children, 27 grandchildren, and 37 great grandchildren (and 65 years of marriage). She was overheard at one of the last family reunions to say: "I started all this?"

Alice MacCormack warmed the hearts of everyone she knew. She was never heard to utter a disparaging word against anyone. She worked hard, laughed lots and loved to sing. Alice lived her days full to the brim with compassion, humility, and most of all, love. And if, at the end of our road this is all that can be said about how we've spent our years on this earth, then as my Nanny Alice would say, "that's just fine dear".