Airmail

Grandmother,

I can't find my favorite picture of you. Do you remember it? It's quite old and faded and black and white, and you kept it on display in the hallway of the Whittier house. You told me it was taken when you were 19. I think the photo was snapped in Arkansas, but I thought it might have been taken on a movie set, because to my childish eyes, none of the Hollywood starlets of your era had anything on your dark eyes and perfectly coiffed hair and beautiful smile. To me, you were much more than the Home-Ec. -studying daughter of a car dealer in the South. You were grace and beauty embodied. Granddaddy must have agreed, because he claimed your hand and your heart.

Before long the two of you had set up house in a quonset hut (in Texas, wasn't it?) with old army mattresses heaped up in different configurations to suggest a couch, a table, a bed... It certainly wasn't your dream house, and it wasn't worthy of your elegance, but you were loved, and in love, and when you talked about that time later with a hint of scorn, I could also detect a genuine fondness in your tone. You were so young and lovely, but your swelling belly suggested that the rest of your life was at the threshold. Soon, your two-days-long labor turned into decades of investment in those you loved.

I'm quite sure you lost your cool once in a while over the years. Three boys trying to make it to adulthood in one piece will do that to any woman. Dad tells me you once managed to break a broomstick on his backside trying to straighten him out. He couldn't tell the story without giggling. I can only imagine what you must have done at the time. For all your occasional prickles and gripes and gossip, you clearly loved your own, and that love was stronger than broomsticks or any of the troubles your family could cook up.
By the time I was born, you and granddaddy were ripe for the picking, much like the sweet, squishy apricots that littered your yard. I never felt anything but love and generosity from you, and some of my fondest memories are of times we all shared... holidays, a black-eyed pea picking expedition, family vacations, Christmas eves, lazy afternoons on your backyard swing.

You may have had sons, but you were every inch the lady--from your overstuffed closets and makeup drawers, to your manicured nails and salon hair. You had at least 3 sets of china and plenty of pretty trinkets. You wore your gold and diamonds regally, and you promised bits and baubles as part of our inheritance.

Perhaps what I remember most is the music of your home. Granddaddy didn't talk much... but he could play and sing. And he did... often. My wonder would multiply when Granddaddy's fiddle that his father made would be brought reverently from its case, and I would be permitted to touch it. Music made life full, beautiful... and it connected us to our past. Music is still one of my greatest joys, and it is one you helped to give to me.
As I grew, I hoped I would grow to be as beautiful as you were. I looked forward to every visit to your house that might mean the gift of some new shade of Estee Lauder lipstick that came free with purchase and didn't appeal to your sensibilities. I also looked forward to the food I knew would adorn the table--from pecan pies, black-eyed peas, and Granddaddy's secret recipe creamed corn to homemade jams and jellies and even the strawberry Jello salad with the Cool Whip topping I despised. If I was lucky, there would also be a box of See's candy somewhere in the house... it was just a matter of finding it and batting my eyelashes a bit.

Of course, you remember better than I do the car accident that injured you so badly when I was just a child. It scared me, perhaps more than it did you. They told me that your seatbelt had saved your life. I don't think it was just an argument to get me to wear mine, either. But you bounced back. You and Granddaddy were invincible. You were part of my life. You always would be.
Or so I thought at the time, but things changed. You would always be here, just not always in the way I would wish.

When Granddaddy went home for the last time, our world crumbled. He was the calm in the eye of our storm, and when he was gone, all that was left were the gales that scattered us. But you and I were thrust together for a month there, before we all gradually drifted apart. Thrust together in a loss we both felt so keenly in our own ways.

When I came to live with you so you wouldn't be alone in the house you had shared with him, I think I began to understand you for the first time... your depth of feeling, your history, your loss. I would lie awake in your huge king bed at night, while you would cry quietly in the guest room, and I would wonder how all of us had been reduced to sobbing and wishing and pleading and feeling that we had been torn from our roots and thrown to the wind. You were there, trying to be strong for my sake. And I longed to be strong for yours, but he was everywhere in our histories, in our lives, in that house. We each had to be strong for the other, though neither of us felt our own strength.Were we strong? I think so. We each made our ways through life without Granddaddy, and we were together again in your house the next time my world fell apart. When I felt more alone than ever, your doors opened to me again--the petulant teenager who had worn out her welcome at home.

You, against your protestations, even found love again. I remember my astonishment when I sat with you and Bob at the airport early in your courtship. The two of you were like a couple of teenagers--giggling, smiling, cooing. I couldn't help but giggle to watch you.

I found love, too... though I think some part of me looked for Granddaddy in every man I met. Mostly, I got it wrong. Except for the one I kept, none of them were worthy of his memory. His shoes were hard to fill.

I know you felt that way, too. I felt it keenly when you cried in your den as I sang for you "At Last," which you told me had been one of your favorite songs so long ago, and was one of my favorite big band songs to perform. You had found love, but you were always so careful to distinguish that your new love was never to be a dishonor to the old. True love is honor.

Clearly, we didn't always see eye to eye. For a while I was only welcome to come over if I would help with the dishes. Me? Help with the dishes? One would think you had asked me to build Rome in a day. But I knew you still loved me, and I think I have improved with age.

As the years went on, we didn't even see as much of each other. Both of us were busy for a while... making new connections, looking for happiness, finding our ways in life. Towards the end, I'm not sure if your wasted body and retreating mind still allowed you to know me at all when I would come to visit--your mind had wandered.

Sometimes I wondered where you were, and if you were happier there. Still, I looked at you and held your hand and told you I loved you. You told me you loved me too... and I knew it was true.

I started saying goodbye to you a couple of years ago. Sometimes it felt as though you were already gone, because what you had been reduced to in the end was not the Grandmother I had known--the woman too youthful and proud to be called "granny" or "grandma." It was "Grandmother," no discussion, while you were that woman. But that's not the woman who lay quietly in the nursing home where your own mother had spent her last years.

I think I knew in my heart that the last time I stood by your bedside before I moved thousands of miles away was our last visit on this earth--that goodbye was the last one I could utter to your face. Still, part of me clung to you, clings to you.... you as I remember you so many years ago: full of life, spunk, pride and immaculate beauty.

Now I know where you are. I can let go of the wasted frame, the depleted mind that were yours at the end. It's that other you that I don't want to let go of. I want to hold you here, to tell you one last time how much it meant to share with you some of the most painful and the most joyful moments of my life. To tell you that I loved you then, though I didn't show it as I ought to have done, and that I love you now. And, as I am sure you know, I'm not sure I quite know how to say this last goodbye.

I take some comfort knowing that you by now must know my heart. You surely know my regrets, and I am quite sure you'd wipe my tears away if you were here in body as I know you are in spirit. I take great joy to think that you are with granddaddy again, and that you are no longer suffering. I can't help be sad for myself, though... and for all of us who loved you and who would have chosen a different ending to our story together. Life is such an amazing gift, but its end is so wrenching, so hard to comprehend.

Give granddaddy a hug for me--give one to him and one to all of the others who have gathered beside you on that other shore, where, as each of you leave, more and more of my heart resides.

May you find mercy in your Savior's face, and rest in his strong, gentle arms. And ask him, if you would, to leave a door open for me--your loving, petulant grandchild, His unworthy child--when I have worn out my welcome on earth and want to run to my Grandmother's house... in our heavenly Father's Kingdom.

----------------------------------In Loving Memory of Charlene
+ March 1, 2008