A few weeks ago, Rodney, Adela, Heidi and I searched a Chico cemetery for Rodney's brother. Look for a small headstone that sits near the intersection of two paths, his mother explained over the phone. And so we looked and looked, kicking up the grass, our pant legs wet and mossy.
I carried Heidi, swinging her infant seat against my legs, hefting her up and over the short stone walls while watching Rodney and Adela search together in the distance. We knew his name, we knew the year of his birth, but the gravestones gave us no other clues.
We wandered for an hour, then Rodney and the girls piled into the car, ready to go. I'll search a little bit longer, I said, and they followed me in the car as I paced the rows, reading faded names. Find the flowers, Rodney called out to me. My mom put flowers next to Stanley, he said. But, the flowers did not lead us to Stanley.
I found three children, each of whom lived one day, one year apart. Keep walking, I told myself, feeling heartbroken.
Finally, it was time to give up. The girls were getting restless and hungry. We had covered the entire grounds of the cemetery except for the front section near the gate. As I turned to get into the car, my eyes landed on Stanley's name. I found him! I shouted. Rodney and Adela tumbled out of the car. As we huddled around Stanley and I felt myself grow close to tears. He'd died before any of us were born, but I knew the life he left. Look there, we pointed. White flowers, just like Grandma Lois said. We looked around for other markers that would help us find him easily the next time: tall trees, gravel intersection, a short distance to the front gate. We noted what could be seen from across the street. Adela knelt down and put her arms around the stone. Rodney and I stood in quiet harmony for a moment, appreciating each other, before signaling to Adela that it was time to go.
That night, I dreamed of rows and rows of crumbling stone. And a search. Just like I knew I would.
Last week, after learning of Grandma Simmons' passing, I went looking for her old letters. I hadn't touched them in years but knew right where they were, tucked away in my rose-patterned box. A sheet of lined white binder paper had a note scribbled high up in the corner saying she'd written the letter a year before but hadn't had my mailing address. She'd held onto the letter until she knew it would find me. In another, she shared stories of her husband's mother, saying she was so talented it confused her....much like me, she supposed.
She wrote to me about her love of nature and her need for harmony and beauty. She told me to enjoy life, to take things moment by moment if needed. To appreciate kindness and smiles. I can imagine her sitting at her dining room table, our holiday gathering place, steadying her pen, concentrating, looking out her window. I imagine her pausing, thinking carefully about what she would write, maybe even stepping away to open the door for a breeze.
When her husband of many decades died, I sat next to her at church, my sister to my left. I remember feeling stiff, young, unsure of what to do or say. I was twenty, on break from school to attend my grandfather's funeral, so unformed and awkward. I wasn't sure if I should touch her or speak. What is the right thing to do in this moment, I wondered...eventually doing nothing at all.
She didn't cry, or reach for anyone, or crumple into the pew. She stared rigidly ahead, listening. Back at their home, where we met to share our respects, I watched her and her sister sit by the window, their heads together. I wondered what they must be saying. After all, what do you say after your husband has died? In her way, she let us know she was ok. It was time to keep on living. And so she did, for twenty more years.
My sister moved in with her to care for her at the end. We finished all of her projects, Tracy says now, so she probably felt at peace. There was nothing left to do. But now her chair sits empty, her beloved garden damp and sparkly in the cold, a sweet marshy smell rising from the nearby river. Tracy walks the grounds, her camera slung over her shoulder, capturing spiny meadow grass, tulle fog, long-fingered crows and tilt-a-whirl mushrooms. Remembering, I can hear the screeching hawks, feel the gravely crunch...
I close my eyes and I am 8 years old, listening to her stories as we snake through the oaks together. I kick buckeyes carelessly, thinking their smooth white caps look like skulls in the weeds. Tracy is there, always there, and my dad is coming to pick us up later in the afternoon to take us home. But not before we get to kiss her weathered brown cheeks and hold her hands with our searching little fingers.
This week, juggling my busy existence, I felt grief settling over me like a fog. It's just not time yet, I found myself thinking. She hasn't even met Heidi -- there has to be a way to stop this, to slow this down, to give us time. But, that's not the way things work. She was ready, my dad and my sister both say. She lived a long, strong, steady life, filled with the beauty she cultivated, the natural world she adored, the light she turned her face to when she kneaded the soil with her hands.
If she watched my oldest daughter grow, she would be proud. She would recognize in her a kindred spirit, one who possesses mindful clarity and a deep and abiding understanding of herself. Heidi is too young to show us more than her calm and tender disposition, but I am sure grandma lives in her, too.
I am not ready to say goodbye so I will not. I will continue to hold the grief just inches from my heart, where it can't make contact just yet. I need to be in her space, her home, looking out of her windows into the grove of trees she tended to and loved like children. Her voice is still there, the one that soothed me and lulled me when my childhood worries took hold. I will listen for it. And then, surrounded by my family and those who knew her, I will read her eulogy and I will say goodbye.
"And somewhere the blue damselfly
sleeps in the reeds
it flew back to when it left my wrist,
its tiny lungs
inhaling, exhaling, its eyes
staring east where the summer moon
is rising,
brushing over the dark pond,
for all of is, the white flower
of dreams."
- Mary Oliver
I love you grandma. Thank you for leading us here. You will make the gardens of heaven bloom, no doubt, especially for the the little children.
~ Katie
Little Sister Pond by Mary Oliver, American Primitive, 1978
