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A woman who loved her family and friends and who was very passionate about music was how Lurline Meredith was remembered on Saturday. Family, friends and well-wishers came together at the St Richards of Chichester Roman Catholic Church, Red Hills Road, St Andrew, to pay their final respects to the woman many Jamaicans knew as the 'Rising Stars grandma' but who to them was so much more.

"She's a jovial person. She's like a comedian; she makes jokes off all of us. She was like a comic. She loves music, and she loves to dance; that's why she was always at Rising Stars. She did love Brown Suga, especially when she did the Pull Up to My Bumpa Baby song, and she'd say, 'Look pan uno bumpa, a mi give all a uno dat'," her daughter, Joy Smith, told THE STAR.

Meredith was the 15th of 18 children for her parents and was born and raised in Bamboo, St Ann. She later moved to Kingston and had seven children. She was a single mom tasked with raising her children in a volatile area. And though they didn't appreciate it at the time, they are now thankful that she was a strong disciplinarian.

"She instilled discipline in us. She was always working hard to take care of us. She was fun, making us happy with whatever little she had. We were happy, always clean, and we were living in the ghetto, but no one could tell that we were from the ghetto. We couldn't walk barefoot and anything," Smith said.

"We [did] not get a lot of time to go out on the road to play, so when we get a chance, the neighbours and the guys on the road would watch to see when she's coming down Lincoln Crescent and then shout, 'Mabaker (her nickname) is coming, run!' Because any how she open that door and you not inside, you're finished," her eldest child, Marlene Chin Shue, said.

"She did not spare the rod and spoil the child," she added.

Meredith passed away on June 30. She was 76 years old.