For a Friend Saying Good-bye to a Grandmother

Grammie, Grandma, Nana, Mimi, Ooma, Grum, Gran, Grandmother . . . know them or not, we all have them – those wonderful women who made us possible.  As a Gran myself now who long ago said her own good-byes to the ones who came before, I remember why I loved them so . . .

A grandmother is someone . . .

whose face lights up just because your face is in the frame . . .

who never forgets your birthday – chances are she was there . . .

who makes things just for you and saves them until you get there . . .

who stands on the porch and waves her good-byes and throws her kisses right into your heart . . .

who is always there – whether you’re thinking of her or not, she’s thinking of you . . .

who smells of magic – and cinnamon – and cookie dough – and love . . .

who will travel on airplanes even though she’s afraid to fly, just to come take care of you when you are sick . . .

who always has treats in her purse and never minds you digging around to see what you can find . . .

who, no matter how old she is, defends you against the world and all its bullies . . .

who laughs delightedly at your jokes and patiently listens to you read and claps at all your school performances . . .

who saves every letter you ever send her . . .

who never holds your mistakes against you, for she has lived long and seen much . . .

A grandmother is a best friend wrapped in an apron, salted with grey hair and etched with the lines of laughter down which have traveled the track of tears . . .

and her handprints are all over you . . . for as long as you’re here, you wear her love like armor and carry her gift of acceptance like a fine jewel in your heart.

Mothering God, I thank you for the grandmothers.

Amen.

When Shirley Died

More than twenty years ago, and more than ten years after the fact, I wrote about the death of my grandfather, Shirley Francis Pyles.  It was written at a time when his wife, my Grandma Mary still lived and I was far from being a grandmother myself.  As I look back, I realize I have for some years lived longer without Grandpa than with him.  It is a startling revelation.  For some time, a family is gathered around the bed of their dying mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Edna Mae.  Ministering to them and coming across what I wrote back then makes me think on my own times of loss, of family gathered around a bedside.

When Shirley Died

How well I still remember Grandpa’s dying, much more than his funeral.  What a time.  Grandpa died slowly and held on to each struggling breath even at the last.  I know because I was there.  We all were: a family sleeping in hospital chairs, I on the floor outside his room.

Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was there; but at the time, I knew it was important.  Not to Grandpa – he was asleep.  That’s how I think of it, anyway.  But to Grandma and my dad, there was no question of where I would be, so there I was.

How startled I was at his funeral.  The casket was open.  The service was comforting to some, not to others, as those things always seem to go.  But at the end, it suddenly occurred to me as I saw the men from the funeral home striding up the church aisle, that the casket lid would be closed on Grandpa as we sat there and watched.  

Up to that moment in my life, I thought I was strong.  In that instant as the lid came down, however, I wanted to scream, to run, to cry out, "No!"  But I was Grandma’s girl.  I said nothing, did nothing, allowing only the pressure of my fingertips in Mom’s arm to give me away – our little secret.

Whether time brings wisdom or not, I do not know.  But I do know that I can look back and understand that Grandma needed to see the lid close, needed the finality of that good-bye.  The more I think on it, the more I think we all need such simple and final good-byes in our lives.

Every time I leave Grandma’s house, she stands at the porch, the inevitable dish rag in hand, and waves good-bye.  Even after she’s gone, that’s how I will always see her.  And as I watch the next generation grow, I picture myself as somebody’s grandma.  I wonder if my granddaughter will pause and watch me standing on the porch and waving goodbye.*


_________________
*I have become the grandmother I imagined I would someday be.  It is a grandson, beautiful Rowen, who sees me waving now and I wonder if somehow, he sees the shadow behind me of my grandmother waving us all on.  I know I do.

The Journey of Goodbye

Early tomorrow morning, I fly back to the United States; and thus will end my time in Scotland.

At this stage in my life, goodbyes have a distinctly different flavor than they did when I was much younger.  Goodbyes have always been hard for me (see Hard Good-byes ), but now they are even more so as I come to the stage in life when you know, genuinely know, that each goodbye has the potential of finality, of the last time, the last embrace, the last fond glance, for nothing in this life is guaranteed.

So even as we plan when we will meet again, we say goodbye as if it really mattered, because somehow, it does, as, looking back over my shoulder (both literally and figuratively), these people oh, so dear to me, fade smaller and smaller, them to me and I to them, into the backdrop of the past.

Photo of grounds of Culzean Castle by Idris Crumlish

It is a disconcerting moment, this bending and blending of time present and time past.

Thus am I left with the visuals of memory . . .

The chance meeting with Peter and Ann, as we each dance so briefly into and out of each other’s lives . . .

Myra left in my hurry to the next friend, standing in the shop looking at shoes – it’s so very ordinary and made the more special for it . . .

Alison and Jamie walking away, hand-in-hand, into the night on the sidewalks of Largs as I sit in the car and watch for just a moment before heading in the opposite direction – away and towards . . .

Cameron and Fraser and Rachel and I posing together, Alison always being good at capturing the moment as we measure my visits like growth charts with me as the wall against which these maturing young people move from childhood into something somehow sweeter for its fleeting . . .

Charlie, always with smile on his face, as kind in the parting as in the welcome . . .

Christine, who seems to get younger as I get older (so unfair as we’re the same age and she about two months older) – as we hug, I feel her shoulders are so small for all they carry that I hate to let her go . . .

Ruaridh smiling his way through it all – his life just begun, such things as goodbyes must seem so trivial in the hurry to the next thing . . .

Neil’s smile above his mother’s head, the son now larger in life than the mother – and Moira’s hug, always reminding me of our first goodbye when she whispered hast ye back into my ear . . .

Bill’s final act of tending this former student, leading me in caravan fashion out of town in the dark of the night, the wave of the flashing car lights our final goodbye as he went right and I left on the roundabout, my spoken thank you unheard by intended ears . . .

Zara hugging me tight and telling me over and over again I don’t want you to go . . .

The well-wishing handshakes at Castlehill Church, all asking with the anxiety of the superstitious – or the weather-worn –  you won’t take the sunshine with you, will you? – I think but do not say that even if I could, I would never take sunshine from these people . . .

Idris and what I imagine will be a quiet hug and goodbye, having had far too many of the hard forever kind of goodbyes of late . . .

Liz – friend and colleague, mentor and confidant, trailblazer and listening ear – how will I do without you close by?  I know when we hug for the last time, I will cry, but it will be all right – we both know it is what I do . . .

The lasting visual of my goodbye to Scotland will be the crowd at the window. . . Leaving Christine and Charlie’s house after a lovely evening filled with good food and better conversation, I turn back for one last look and see in the dark the lit front window as frame for the crowd standing there – Stuart and Patricia, Monica and Les, Ricky and Susan, Charlie and Christine – all waving goodbye.  They are in shadow to us, but I can still see them smiling . . .

All my goodbyes – the ones already had and those yet to come – stand framed in my mind, the real people that they are frozen in moments in time – that thing we call the past – even as they and as I continue our own presents.

And so it is that through all my goodbye tears, I too am smiling – smiling into the faces of friends – even those I leave, knowing the comfort that the void of these goodbyes will soon be filled with the presence of heart-warming hellos – home.

Hard Good-Byes

I’m big on good-byes.  I really don’t know why, because they’re so hard; but I have always felt that good-byes, literal, in-person partings, matter.  I'm the Mom who stands waving until you're out of sight, even to the point of running from the back door to the front to see you up the highway with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes -- Shakespeare knew what he was talking about -- it really is sweet sorrow.

I’ve experienced comical partings, as when I said good-bye to a summer co-worker and friend, Molly, at the train station.  Molly is young enough to be my daughter.  Even though we had only known each other for a short time, as the train pulled out, I broke down sobbing.  A sympathetic man asked, “Your daughter?”  Still sobbing, all I could manage was a choked “No!”  I’ve always worried about that poor man who must have thought all sorts of horrible thoughts, having no idea that I’m just a big cry baby when it comes to good-byes.

And like all of us, I’ve experienced the heart-breaking good-byes: saying farewell to friends and family as they were dying.  Being there, being able to have the recognition observed between us that this really is a good-bye mattered; hard as it was, I always knew I was where I should be.

But perhaps the hardest good-bye of all wasn’t my own, but one I witnessed.

I didn’t know it would be, but it was the last time I saw my Grandma Mary.  I had taken my son Ben to see her at the nursing home where she was an unwilling resident.

We said our good-byes at the front door where Grandma had walked with us.  I had taken a few steps towards the front door, where the sun was streaming through the glass.  Then I turned back.

Grandma was holding onto Ben, her arms around his waist, clinging to him as if she were clinging to life itself.  Under the protection of his embrace, she was so small.

Ben’s face was full of sadness; Grandma’s, determination: if she just held on to him tight enough, he would carry her out of there and away from her broken body.  All her strength of will, always considerable, was locked in that hug.

And just for a moment, the two of them were melded together – one.

I have often thought that walking away from her was one of the hardest things Ben ever did.

All good-byes are hard, some more so than others.   And some catch us unawares.

But somehow, they all matter.