Survival is a harsh mistress-- how Grandma helped me let go of it.
A few months before my grandmother passed, I greeted her where she sat warm and comfortable in her favorite chair. Never a more fitting throne, her grey hair plenty a coronet, her red fleece jacket a royal robe as worthy as there ever was. Not that my grandmother was some perfect angel, mind-- I knew enough to know that her sceptre had been wielded as a weapon, that she had flung her coronet into the teeth of her children more than once. Nonetheless, there are no flax linens without stain, and there are no grandmothers that can be perfectly washed. Hot water and bleach are no treatment for the delicate fabric, anyway.
The conversation proceeded simply, as they always did. I knew my grandmother to be a deceptively unassuming person, often buried in a classic movie or a puzzle or in rounds of simple card games with her grandchildren, and not seemingly prone to profound thought. But people are like onions, with layers-- some big onions, some small, some with fewer layers and some more, but almost always there’s an entire warm, soft earth beneath the protective crust.
She asked me how I was. I hemmed and hawed-- no need for some in-depth revelation of my woes, I thought. Troubling 102 year old women with personal troubles always seemed a bit, well, pretentious. She had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, for heaven’s sake. What did my little pibbles matter? And yet, I always think it unwise to be outright dishonest, so after a pause, I simply sighed heavily and said “I’m alive. Just working.”
Truth of the matter is, life at the time was not easy. Is it ever for anyone? Financial woes compounded existential suffering compounded mental illness compounded financial woes. Each day was as exhausting as wading through mud. Medications kept the depression at my thighs or ankles instead of my neck, therapy helped me learn to better traverse the terrain, and connections with friends gave me sustenance, but I might as well have been attempting a marathon in irrigation boots on a flooded farm. There’s only so far you can get before a step is more effort than a mile.
This moment of honesty prompted her to look me square in the eye. She pursed her lips, not cruelly but with concern, and said, simply: “Well, that doesn’t really sound like living.”
The moment was a total solar eclipse, an alignment of two souls with complex orbits, a glimpse from a heart to a heart-- penetrating, unvarnished, as fierce as it was quiet, backed with the power of 102 full years of experience. She saw that I had not spark, and so she flicked one of hers, and it set me on fire.
It has stuck with me since.
What in the world was I doing!? A marathon in boots on a flooded farm? The way I had set up my life was a simple but effective recipe for misery and failure. If I want to run a marathon, I need solid road and sneakers, not muddy pasture. (I really DON’T want to run a marathon, by the way, but bear with me). So, I got myself out of the ditch, invested in shoes, and ran.
My grandmother, when her husband passed away in 1988, wrote in her journal that her life had ended. But, it didn’t end. Something flipped. She traveled the world: Germany! Austria! Israel! She went on a mission for her church! She not just existed, she LIVED. It is one thing to do a puzzle, and quite another to dedicate one’s entire effort and focus to completing it. And that is how my grandmother did puzzles, how she played card games, and most importantly, how she talked to her posterity-- we all knew that she was “with us,” that we had her undivided attention. Little wonder that all ~160 of her posterity, excluding a few babies, came to her funeral. And, with all the force of that experience, she delivered her legacy in a simple comment that has allowed me to rise with the torch.
Now, whenever I hear these lyrics by Imagine Dragons, I cry, and I smile. Most importantly, I remember her.
"These days when I'm on the brink of the edge
I remember the words that you said
Remember the life you led
You'd say, 'Oh, suck it all up, don't get stuck in the mud
Thinkin' of things that you should have done'
I'll see you again, my loved one"
Thank you for reigniting my flame, Grandma. I'll see you again, my loved one.
The conversation proceeded simply, as they always did. I knew my grandmother to be a deceptively unassuming person, often buried in a classic movie or a puzzle or in rounds of simple card games with her grandchildren, and not seemingly prone to profound thought. But people are like onions, with layers-- some big onions, some small, some with fewer layers and some more, but almost always there’s an entire warm, soft earth beneath the protective crust.
She asked me how I was. I hemmed and hawed-- no need for some in-depth revelation of my woes, I thought. Troubling 102 year old women with personal troubles always seemed a bit, well, pretentious. She had lived through the Great Depression and World War II, for heaven’s sake. What did my little pibbles matter? And yet, I always think it unwise to be outright dishonest, so after a pause, I simply sighed heavily and said “I’m alive. Just working.”
Truth of the matter is, life at the time was not easy. Is it ever for anyone? Financial woes compounded existential suffering compounded mental illness compounded financial woes. Each day was as exhausting as wading through mud. Medications kept the depression at my thighs or ankles instead of my neck, therapy helped me learn to better traverse the terrain, and connections with friends gave me sustenance, but I might as well have been attempting a marathon in irrigation boots on a flooded farm. There’s only so far you can get before a step is more effort than a mile.
This moment of honesty prompted her to look me square in the eye. She pursed her lips, not cruelly but with concern, and said, simply: “Well, that doesn’t really sound like living.”
The moment was a total solar eclipse, an alignment of two souls with complex orbits, a glimpse from a heart to a heart-- penetrating, unvarnished, as fierce as it was quiet, backed with the power of 102 full years of experience. She saw that I had not spark, and so she flicked one of hers, and it set me on fire.
It has stuck with me since.
What in the world was I doing!? A marathon in boots on a flooded farm? The way I had set up my life was a simple but effective recipe for misery and failure. If I want to run a marathon, I need solid road and sneakers, not muddy pasture. (I really DON’T want to run a marathon, by the way, but bear with me). So, I got myself out of the ditch, invested in shoes, and ran.
My grandmother, when her husband passed away in 1988, wrote in her journal that her life had ended. But, it didn’t end. Something flipped. She traveled the world: Germany! Austria! Israel! She went on a mission for her church! She not just existed, she LIVED. It is one thing to do a puzzle, and quite another to dedicate one’s entire effort and focus to completing it. And that is how my grandmother did puzzles, how she played card games, and most importantly, how she talked to her posterity-- we all knew that she was “with us,” that we had her undivided attention. Little wonder that all ~160 of her posterity, excluding a few babies, came to her funeral. And, with all the force of that experience, she delivered her legacy in a simple comment that has allowed me to rise with the torch.
"These days when I'm on the brink of the edge
I remember the words that you said
Remember the life you led
You'd say, 'Oh, suck it all up, don't get stuck in the mud
Thinkin' of things that you should have done'
I'll see you again, my loved one"
Thank you for reigniting my flame, Grandma. I'll see you again, my loved one.
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