Where the Gifts Lay
I was working my way through grief. The waves mellowed in time, but a pervasive sadness arose. I had to find a way out of the sadness. It wasn’t that raw, gut-wrenching grief I was feeling. It was that I had to live the rest of my life without her. I could not imagine not having Grandma.
How does one live without someone to share the joy?
How does someone live without the peace she brings? How does one find the beauty in life that she brought? How do I go on when the best person on the planet just left me?
I could not imagine.
I felt that way for years. I batoned up a place in my heart so that I did not have to feel that way all the time. Middle school passed, then high school. I threw myself into my studies, lived in my head, stayed out of my heart. I met someone to love, someone who made me laugh. I really needed to laugh again. I really needed to laugh off the sorrow. I needed to break up the batoning. I needed to feel again.
This person loved to travel. Grandma had friends who traveled all over the world. He loved history. Grandma’s home was full of history in the things she chose to own. He had a garden that his mother had planted – full of beauty that he shared with me. Grandma’s garden was full of roses, hydrangeas, daisies, pelargoniums, and great trees. She loved her garden and shared it with her grandchildren. This person I fell in love with was passionate about life. Grandma had tremendous passion for life in all its trimmings and made sure that her grandchildren had them.
Grandma was incredibly generous. She gave us holiday dresses and paten leather shoes. She took us to Fairyland, to the zoo, to her sister’s house. She took us on bus rides to the downtown department store. She cared for us each weekend, not an easy task with four rambunctious children. She bought us toys, dolls, and paper dolls. She let us use her old typewriter. She played lots of music for us – on records and on her piano. She made a Sunday dinner for the whole family each weekend. She breathed generosity and fullness into our lives: It’s just who she was.
The man I fell in love with one day became my husband. He is a profoundly generous person. He paid most of my way through grad school. He brought me roses at every turn, and when we had a home of our own, we planted roses upon roses together. He found all the trimmings of life and insisted I should have them. He gave generously to our children and still does. He is kind to the elderly and ill people and disabled people.
One by one, my husband peeled away the walls around my heart. His humor restored joy, as did our sojourn into the wild. I could not believe how beautiful it was there, how rich the swell of life there. Creating a home and garden together that we both loved let me enjoy beauty again. When we walk together in nature, be it in our garden or in the wild places, the passion for life is rekindled for both of us, and we walk in peace. When he is generous, he rekindles the generosity I learned from my Grandma. When he is kind to the elderly, the ill, and the disabled, to all peoples, I am profoundly reminded of my Grandma’s compassion.
When my Grandma was 71, her daughter, my mother, died, leaving the entire family bereft. Grandma reached out to my father to help raise the children. They reached an agreement that she would take us on the weekends. It gave him time to grieve, to date, to finish building the house he was building for us. It gave Grandma time to take care of our hearts, and that she did. She talked to us about our mother, showed us pictures, gave us words for feelings that were too big for small children. Then she took us out into the garden and taught us to feed the birds. All the while, she too was grieving. But she let her grief roll forth in acts of compassion toward her grandchildren. At night she held us before putting us to bed, cradling our hearts, safeguarding them for the future, bringing us peace.
My husband gave me his all in times of trouble and in times of joy. He recognized the pain in my heart almost from the get go. He responded with love, with compassion, with tenderness, with affection. When our children got hurt, he was the first to whisk them off to the emergency room, the first to offer help as they got older, were leading lives of their own, and a mishap occurred. He was quick to visit a friend in the hospital even though his own medical history made it difficult to be in hospitals. He stayed by my side day after day when I was in the hospital. His compassion helped heal my heart.
Beneath the pervasive sadness I felt when I was younger lay a gold mine my Grandma had bequeathed to me. My heart needed healing so that I could get to where the gifts lay. I needed someone to love, someone who would love me with humor, with passion, with generosity, with compassion. Who could love me until joy erupted once again. Who could remind me of all the good, all the peace, all the beauty, all the generosity I had once known just by being who he is. Who could take down my walls with great compassion.
