On Saturday, March 1, 2025, Irene Judd Wolfgram departed this life with her son and daughter-in-law by her side. She was recuperating from a recent pacemaker surgery when she passed suddenly yet peacefully at Spring Valley Hospital in Las Vegas just minutes after laughing and joking with them. Her final breath in this life was taken in room 328. Her first breath was taken on 3/28 in 1944.
Irene was beloved by her family, friends and fellow church members and community volunteers.
Irene’s work ethic, commitment and dedication were present in everything she did including her decades of work at GMAC Mortgage and her happy retirement years volunteering at her church and in the community through Saint Rose Hospitals.
In keeping with her devotion to her lifelong Christian faith, Irene lived life with a servant’s heart always helping others. She humbly recognized the gift that God granted her as a listener and shared it daily. She listened as a loyal friend and trusted confidante to all those who regularly stopped at her door to talk and get a treat for their doggies. Irene will be dearly missed by her many friends at the Horizon Senior Apartments and her fellow parishioners at Victory Road Church of Christ.
Her family feels her loss as profoundly as they have always felt her love. In that, there was a ready and never-ending supply. Irene was a rock and anchor in the family and in her friendship circle. She will be dearly missed; yet, the seeds of love she has always planted will continuously grow.
Irene was a joyful gardener in this life planting both seeds of love and endless growing plants and flowers around her ~ from her years growing up in Kentucky, to her decades living in Iowa and then to her retirement years in Henderson, Nevada. She was forever happy to be planting and tending to growing things, both plants, people and pets. Irene’s gardens always flourished and animals of all kinds came to her readily, especially her favorite hummingbird friends.
All the people in her life benefited from her steadying presence, her plucky spirit, her feisty humor, her keen mind, her wisdom, her constant help and her heartfelt depth of love.
That love will continue to encircle us all. We are wrapped in it forever just like the warm, cozy blankets that she continuously knitted, crocheted, sewed and quilted throughout her life.
Irene lived her eighty years with faith, devotion, love, courage, resilience, wisdom and humor. Those gifts continue within all whose lives she so generously touched.
The family is honoring Irene’s life privately and yet we all encourage you to celebrate her in whatever way calls to your hearts. We know she has a place in so many of them.
How does one return to life after being visited by death?
For me, that answer has been gradually… sometimes messily then at moments abundantly or sporadically but at all times feeling that something has dramatically and inalterably changed about my life. Those who have navigated deep grief ~ over any type of loss ~ understand.
Several times, I had thought to write more fully about my journey and experiences of the past three years, but it seemed daunting, and I thought, “Later.” Now……. feels like later. So… this is my beginning Now to share some of what I could not begin to share until Later. New life is emerging in earnest now and yet it isn’t too late to share about death.
Death and grief, that tandem duo have danced through my life and the lives of those I love over the past three years.
Like everyone’s story in recent years, it began in 2020….. The shock of a global pandemic and the fear-filled collective uncertainty placed us all in the cross hairs of grief. We were shot through the heart with it, all of us. Personally, I was feeling all of that, AND it was augmented by a complete uprooting of my home and life simultaneously. My previous share “Moving Through This” speaks to that.
As I gain a wider perspective now, I see the continual and ongoing persevering that we have all been doing for years… that I have been doing for years. It seems that we have been adapting to and navigating through one traumatic event and pivotal change after another. It has been a gauntlet.
For our family, that year of 2020 concluded with our adult daughter moving out on her own in September and my husband’s mom undergoing open heart surgery in early November just a few weeks before we would complete the building of our new home. During our home building, I was still grieving the loss of the prior beloved house we had built together and just left after 15 years. Now I was also grieving the loss of having my daughter at home, as all empty nest moms know too well.
Life was in flux everywhere it seemed. Still, my resilient self was at the forefront. On November 2nd, I sat in the hospital waiting room as my mother-in-law was in surgery while her son diligently worked on crucial final details of our home build. Days before Thanksgiving 2020 we brought mom home to the rental house we were in, and the day after Thanksgiving we moved her into our newly built home to stay with us until she was recuperated enough to live on her own at her apartment. Home building and coping with an empty nest amidst a global pandemic while helping our mom through her health crisis was A LOT…
We had no idea how much we would get used to “a lot.” And as I offer that, I am certain that ALL OF US can say that!! We had no idea how much we would get used to “a lot.” Everyone I know has been through so very much in recent years. It really has just been “a lot!!!”
Being in our new home was a genuine blessing, but I couldn’t use the common phrase of “settling in.” There wasn’t a settled feeling about life then and wouldn’t be for a long while. Death and grief would knock on our door… again… and again.. and again……………….
Three months and three weeks after moving into our new home, my dad died suddenly, wrenching my world apart on the inside. One year, two months and a day after that, my husband’s father also passed. The impact would be with him everyday. Their nearly daily phone calls had come to an end. Together, my husband and I held continual space for one another’s deep grief.
In between the bookend deaths of our fathers, my last maternal uncle made his transition less than six months after my dad. Two months and a day after my uncle’s passing, his lifelong friend, his brother’s best friend and my much loved honorary uncle died as well. Two months and a day after my honorary uncle passed, his sister-in-law, my lifelong cheerleader and my kindred spirit, honorary aunt also made her transition.
My dad’s sudden death was a seismic, high magnitude earthquake in my life (and in the life of my brother and so many family and friends.) That earthquake was followed by aftershocks galore as it seemed one death after another came. It felt like dad had opened the door and one loved one after another had followed him, until my husband’s dad closed it gently behind him (for a while.)
Grief IS all that love we want to give to the one we’ve lost. Grief IS immense love with no place to go. Where there is grief, there has been great love. Grief, then, truly is love in a different expression.
After all, “It can’t all be sorrow can it?….. What is grief, if not love persevering?”
(Vision from the WandaVision television show.)
I could go on… and on… about the impacts of all these deaths and my journey through the grieving process. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, you’ve experienced that of me already. Still, this is not anything to be minimized or glossed over.
Coping with grief, death, profound losses of any kind and dramatic sudden change are all important and significant. Our society as a whole is ill-equipped to do so well, and we are ALL greatly in need of genuine care and support in navigating the grief strewn mine-field of life that we are living through now. We all need compassion and care, for ourselves and others, as we continue to return to life day after day with so much ongoing uncertainty, grief, loss and change. And so…
May we find that what has been heart breaking can be heart opening and connect us with one another anew. My belief is that it truly can. It is our shared humanity in earnest.
In time, I sense that I’ll share more of my personal journey of grief, grace and growing through it all.
For now, I simply wanted to share this glimpse of my own landscape of recent years. There has been so very much that has been meaningful and to be celebrated as well… and that even includes death’s knocks at our door. Through it all, love perseveres.
DeAnne Wolfgram 