Saying Goodbye

I cried when I heard the news that morning.

The tears weren’t for her, though, not really. My grandmother had lived a full, beautiful life, and this was her final prayer answered: she was going home. In these last days, her twilight days, she would sometimes ask about home, and with our worried focus on a relentless dementia, we’d be quick to reassure her that she was already there. If her eyes darted around, unsure and unbelieving, I wonder now- maybe it was because we didn’t really understand quite what she was homesick for. And she was tired. The kind of tired that comes from sowing 87 years of joy into a world of motley soil, weathering the storms of life, pollinating the hearts of others with her busy, vibrant style, all while carrying the weight of the losses the world had handed her on her straight and forward shoulders. For so long the load seemed effortless, but time has a way of revealing the weight of accumulation, and these last days, the shroud was slipping. So for her, peace was a gift, not a cause for crying.

No, the tears were selfish ones; they were for me. These were little girl tears, defiant of understanding; tears that would not be comforted, only spent. And I’m spending them still, in snitches and snatches. They slip out, unbidden, at the juxtaposition of the familiar visage of styled hair and beautifully made up face against a crisp Skip Bo card tranquilly waiting under stilled hands. The tears are pulled by longing for more of that joy she so artfully sowed in laughter and love. They spill suddenly as lyrics burst into my consciousness, escaping from doors marked “Memories to Keep,” and dance there, out of time. “Mares eat oats, and goats eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you?” The tears march solidly as I watch her great grandsons carrying her through cold, gray air. And they run haphazardly at times, like delighted children exploring a sun kissed Thousand Trails, anxious to share their adventures with her over a glass of Kool-Aid and a sandwich. They sound like waterfalls sparkling in the sun at Turner Falls, and they don’t taste of pure salt, but are laced with snickerdoodles- a little salty, a little sweet.

Like messengers, they come, telling her story- pouring out memories and the sorrow of loss, mingling grief with thanksgiving- for how lucky we were to be in her garden, to live in the rich soil she’d tilled and turned, to be touched by those wings. And oh, how we’ll miss her so.