My suitcase wasn’t even unpacked from my maternal grandmother’s funeral when I got the call about my dad’s mom: “Grandma has been in bed all week. We’re driving down tomorrow to say goodbye.”
I do realize the extravagance of this gift I’ve been given, having grandparents I’ve known into adulthood. I feel almost guilty grieving these losses, like someone in Hawaii complaining about the winter.
And yet grief is so rarely a rational animal. There is little comfort in comparing wounds, no balm in “at-leasting” them.At least I had her so long. At least she went peacefully. At least she’s no longer suffering. It may be true, but it does little to erase the loss.
Grandma celebrated her 102nd birthday this summer, but her mind remained as bright as ever. Whenever I visited, I perused the books on her end table: mysteries, historical fiction, chunky nonfiction titles. As I listened to her delineate the tactical strategies from her recent World War II read, I found myself shaking my head, hoping to be as well read when I grow up.
Books are, after all, how she and I became friends. I knew her as my grandma my whole life, of course, but with twelve children and a gaggle of grandchildren, she always had a lot of voices clamoring for her attention.
One summer when I was in junior high, we went to her and Grandpa’s condo to swim, and she noticed the copy of Anne of Green Gables under my arm. I told her about Anne, the book’s spunky red-haired heroine. Before long, I was passing along the entire series to her (and eventually to Grandpa too) when I finished each one. As we had our own informal book club over the course of eight books, I realized how much of Anne I saw in my grandma: both were gingers who had lost parents young and had come out resilient (and a little fiery) on the other side. Both were lovers of literature who got an education at a time when not many women did. Both took a legacy of loss and wrote a redemptive story for the generations after them.
Grandma’s story could have been a book itself. I think about the vignettes I’ve heard over the years—how she met Grandpa in college just before the war, how she waited and prayed for his return after he enlisted, how he mailed her a parachute so she could use the silk for her wedding dress, how they got married on a Tuesday right before Lent (so they wouldn’t have to wait until after Easter), how she and Grandpa had a dozen kids in 14 years, how she lived independently (and read independently) until past the century mark.
She didn’t see herself as a heroine, but then again, aren’t all the real heroes the ones who don’t realize it? “Oh, honey,” she’d tell me, “I just did what I had to do.” On every page, her life was marked by humility and grit.
But perhaps more than anything, she didn’t see herself as heroic because she knew she was part of a larger story. And she knew the Author who was writing it:
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Psalm 139:16
Grandma, your final chapter is over here on earth. But your story on the other side is just beginning. Only this time you get to read the book before I do.
You were never one to spoil an ending, but I’m pretty sure the story you’re living now in is the grandest one of all. In this story, there’s a happily ever after, but no “the end.”
I don’t know exactly what the literary scene looks like in heaven. But I’m putting in a special request to be in your book club just in case.
Hope . . . makes possible our ability to recognize that the world in which we find ourselves has a story; and if there’s a story, there’s a storyteller. Stanley Hauerwas
In my memory, it is forever summer at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The desert sun is always beating down as we run through the sprinkler. The Columbia River is always cold and clear. The homemade ice cream tastes like spoonsful of heaven. And there are always raspberries in the garden, deep red and begging to be picked.
Every summer when we kids visited my grandparents, we looked forward to picking raspberries with Grandpa. We could have been out playing, but we followed him to the garden, Pied Piper style, even though we knew that meant we’d be put to work.
Green baskets in hand, we’d alternate between filling our baskets and popping the sun-ripened berries into our mouths. As we made our way down the meticulous rows, Grandpa plied us with riddles and puzzles to solve.
Railroad crossing; look out for cars. Can you spell that without any r’s?
Although Grandpa spent nearly his entire career as an analytical chemist, he was truly a teacher at heart. Before being recruited by a nuclear plant at the height of the Cold War, he spent several years as a high school chemistry teacher. But he never stopped teaching. The raspberry patch became his classroom, and we were his students.
When Grandpa finished picking his rows, he’d head over to help with mine. “I got them all,” I would say confidently. He’d just smile, and then, to my utter amazement, fill several baskets’ worth of berries from the bushes I was certain were bare.
***
I got the news that Grandpa’s heart beat for the last time on a hot June day. The raspberries in my own garden—a weak nod to Grandpa’s legacy—were just starting to ripen.
A decade and a half ago, dementia started pulling my grandfather away from us. It began as a slow trickle at first, until eventually the current picked up and swept him away, one memory at a time.
The last time I saw him, he said, “Am I supposed to know you?” When I told him I was his granddaughter, he cocked his head and squinted at me. “No, that’s not it,” he said, as if trying to solve a riddle. “But I do think I know you.”
He gave me a hug anyway.
How do you summarize a life of 90-plus years? If I had to pin Grandpa down to a single attribute, I suppose I would say he was a study in faithfulness. He was married to the same woman for 66 years. He was a member of the same church for 61 years. He worked at the same company for 37 years. He tended the same raspberry patch for four decades. And under his meticulous care, all manner of things flourished.
In the days before his death, the thin space between heaven and earth became increasingly gauzy. Near the end, he could hardly breathe, but when my mom and her sisters said the Lord’s Prayer over him, he opened his eyes and mouthed the words right along with them.
On earth as it is in heaven . . .
Now Grandpa’s mind has been returned to him. He has been reunited with his memories. And I like to think he’s sharing his riddles with a whole new audience beyond the pearly gates.
As I teach my son to fill up his own basket of raspberries, I’m struck by the rich bounty we’ve been given. The raspberry harvest is sweet. But not as sweet as the harvest from a life faithfully lived.
***
What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
Frederick Buechner
Did you figure out the answer to the riddle? It’s that.
A few weeks ago, Daniel and I went out to dinner and got seated by a table of 20 or so kids celebrating homecoming. We sat there and just watched them for a while (not that we had much choice—we couldn’t have heard what the other person was saying above the teenage racket).
Now that we’re about two decades out from homecoming ourselves, we found the scene fascinating, like some kind of sociological study. The guys were all on one end of the table, jockeying to be the loudest or make the funniest joke. The girls were pulling out lip gloss at two-minute intervals, adjusting their teeny dresses and trying to get the attention of the guys, who had eyes only for their burgers.
After they left, Daniel and I looked at each other, slightly dazed, ears still ringing.
“So,” Daniel said finally. “If you could go back and say something to your 17-year-old self, what would you say?”
We laughed as we considered tips for our former selves:
To the former Stephanie: You know, those high-waisted, tight-rolled jeans are not really as flattering as you think they are.
To the former Daniel: Dude, you should really cut your hair.
But most of all, when I think about the 17-year-old me, I want to cup her face in my hands and say, It’s going to get better. Those things that seem to matter so much right now—the girls who are mean to you in the locker room, the boys who seem to think you’re invisible—it’s not going to matter that much someday. There is so much more to life than you can see right now, and those things that make you feel out of step with the rest of the world . . . you will recognize them as gifts one day. Yes, maybe you’ll get teased as the yearbook’s biggest bookworm, but someday you’ll get to read and write books for a living. And there’s going to be a really handsome man (he with the once-long hair) who will love you just the way God knows you need to be loved. And best of all, you’ll be comfortable in your own skin.
***
Last week a beautiful woman from our church was taken from us after the tumor in her brain gained too much ground. She was one of those people who was sunshine in human form—always offering warm hugs and greetings, beaming her genuine smile, making people feel loved and welcomed.
Daniel and I stood in a three-hour line at Kim’s visitation, surrounded by hundreds of other people whose lives had been touched by this woman of God. Story after story poured out about how her life had been marked by love and service—to God, to her family, to her church, and to anyone whose path she crossed.
As we looked at the photos around the room—the one of Kim with her husband’s arm around her, the one of her laughing with her children and grandchildren, the one of her hugging kids on a service trip in Ecuador—it struck me in a fresh way what really matters. I get so caught up in the things that seem urgent, the things that clamor for my attention and keep me buzzing from one item on the to-do list to the next.
I have to wonder if Kim would cup my face in her hands and say, “Things are going to get so much better. And those things that worry you, the things you think are so important? They’re not going to matter all that much one day.”
I’m not so different from those high school students, I’m afraid, so focused on the here and now. But I want to hang on to the legacy Kim leaves behind: Love God. Love people. This is what really matters.
I have no doubt that when Kim went home to her Father, she was greeted just as warmly as she’d greeted people on this side of eternity. And I’m confident these words echoed off the streets of gold: “Well done, Kim, my good and faithful servant.”
Forget the sequined dresses and the loud table talk. That’s the ultimate homecoming.
There are some moments when the curtain between heaven and earth flutters open slightly and we are able to get a peek into the other side. Such was the case for me on a Saturday I won’t soon forget.
My mom and I went to visit my childhood pastor and his wife, who have also become family friends over the years. They moved into a retirement facility last year, and not long after they settled into their new place, Pastor Bob’s Alzheimer’s progressed to the point that Ruth could no longer take care of him. He now lives in a separate wing in the same facility, where he gets round-the-clock care from nurses, not to mention daily visits from Ruth, who feeds him, does his laundry, holds his hand, and talks to him, even though he no longer knows her name and can’t form coherent words in response.
Ruth and Bob celebrated their anniversary the week before our visit. “Sixty-four years,” she says, her eyes sparkling. Her face becomes animated as she recounts the story of their whirlwind engagement. They’d been dating for a number of years, but in those years just after the Second World War, housing was nearly impossible to find. Then one day Bob’s dad saw a farm he just had to have and bought it on the spot. He asked Bob if he would farm it. Would he!
Bob wasted no time rushing to Ruth’s apartment, taking the stairs three at a time.
Excitedly he announced, “We can get married!”
Ruth stared at him in amazement. “When?”
“Two weeks should work.”
“Two weeks?” Her mouth fell open. “Impossible!”
They compromised. Three weeks.
“My poor mother!” Ruth says with a laugh. “Only three weeks to plan a wedding—and just before Christmas, at that!”
Then a shadow comes over Ruth’s countenance. “I married a man,” she says. “And now I have a little boy.”
* * *
Sitting around Ruth’s dining room table, eating spice cookies off gold dishes and sipping sparkling pomegranate juice, we hear the update on Bob—how he no longer seems to recognize his children, how this man who had once made a living communicating is now essentially nonverbal. He can make sounds, but everything comes out in gibberish. Ruth isn’t sure if he always recognizes her, but often when she enters the room, he reaches out his arms, like a child who wants to be picked up and loved.
“It’s difficult,” Ruth says, “what with his apparent loss of memory about his life and his walk with the Lord.” Other than a rare whisper of “Thank you, Jesus” or “Praise the Lord,” or the time he hummed the entire tune of “Children of the Heavenly Father,” the faithful man she once knew is now mostly locked inside.
As I reach over and grab her hand, I think about how fine that line is separating heaven and earth. And I cling to the hope that in this fuzzy in-between place, where human bodies crumble and memories fail, God never forgets us: “I, the Lord, made you, and I will not forget you” (Isaiah 44:21).
* * *
After lunch we go down to the Alzheimer’s wing to visit Pastor Bob. I thought I knew what to expect, but there’s no real way to prepare for finding someone so drastically changed. This once articulate man, so full of energy, always ready with a joke or a story or a theological conundrum, can’t even say hello.
Mom and I share fond memories with Pastor Bob, mostly for Ruth’s benefit. As we sit there, a flood of memories washes over me—Pastor Bob praying over me at my confirmation, the way he led our congregation in prayer before church potlucks, the way he always remembered to pray for the sick and the shut-ins. And I wondered, Who is praying for him now that he’s the one who’s sick?
Without thinking, I say, “Pastor Bob, can I pray for you?”
And for the first time that visit, his entire face beams. His eyes connect directly with mine, and he offers me his widest grin.
I don’t even know what comes out of my mouth in that prayer—I’m sure my own words are little more than gibberish. But it doesn’t matter. God understands what both our hearts are saying.
The early Celtic Christians had a name for the times when the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted. Thin places, they called them. According to one Celtic saying, heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places, that gap narrows and we are given a peek into God’s glory.
Later that afternoon, when Mom and I get in the car to head home, we stare at each other, trying to take in all we were witness to that day.
“I feel kind of shaky,” Mom tells me, and I agree.
A thin place indeed. Who wouldn’t feel shaky when you’re standing at such a small gap between heaven and earth?
***
Epilogue: Between the time of the writing and the posting of this piece, Pastor Bob passed through that thin place. He is now face-to-face with his Savior, with no veil between him and his Savior.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
