Juxtaposition

It was a cold morning, and I was alone in the car when the call came the first time.  It was my mom calling, telling me that I needed to come as quickly as possible because my dad’s condition was getting worse.

It was on another cold morning just over two years later when the call came the second time, and I was alone in the kitchen of my house when I answered the phone and heard that I needed to come.  But this time it was my brother-in-law David, calling to tell me that my sister Nancy was in labor, news that I was so happy and excited to hear.

Looking back to the time just before the first call, I was expecting the call to come at some point, although on some level I believed that there could be another outcome, better news coming instead or at least the bad news being delayed for a long time.  The second time, though, I knew the call was coming soon, and I had been eagerly awaiting hearing the words at the other end of the line.  We would be gaining a new member of the family this time.

Both times when the calls came, I dropped what I was doing and frantically packed a suitcase.  Both times, as I backed out of the driveway, I promised to my husband that I would keep him posted about what was going on after I’d gotten there.  Both times as soon as I'd gotten on the road, I called my sister Jennifer to talk to her about her plans for travel from where she was in California, and then I drove in silence while so many thoughts and emotions ran through my head that I finally had to turn on some music.  When Jennifer gave me her flight information after the second call, we both realized that the departure and arrival times of her flight that day were identical to those after the first time the call had come.  And we both knew that she would again be racing the clock to get there in time, with none of us having any control over whether or not she would make it there soon enough.

Both times after I’d started my drive along the same route, I struggled to control the panic I felt rising up in my chest.  Both times, I felt desperate to talk to the person about whom the call had been made: the first time, my dad, and the second time, Nancy. I wanted to call one of the people already there but knew my call would be intrusive in the midst of what was happening there.  Both times I knew that there would be little to nothing I could do to make things any better, and yet both times I felt an almost indescribably pressing need to get there, a magnetic force pulling me east along the interstate.  As I drove, I thought about how odd it was that that particular day was just a regular day for the people in other vehicles I was passing along the road. 

I stopped for gas along the way both times, and, as the fuel pumped into the car, I texted others in my family to see what was going on and to report on my estimated time of arrival.  Both times I called Jennifer again once I got back on the road, and we talked about what we thought would be the quickest way for her to get from the airport to where I would be when she arrived.  Both times I heard the rising panic in her voice when she talked about having to be cut off from communication with the rest of us while she was in the air, and both times I assured her that I would take care of things until she could get there and that transportation would be arranged for her by the time her flight had landed.  Both times I told her that I believed she would make it there in time, and both times I could only hope that that prediction would hold true.

The first time when the call had come, my destination was my parents’ house, but the second time it was the hospital, one chosen by Nancy for her delivery because it was a different hospital from where we had been both times during my dad’s inpatient stays.  Both times when I arrived, I turned the car off and made myself take a few deep breaths before I hit the ground running.  Both times I was acutely aware that life for everyone in my family was about to change.

On both of those days, there was a flurry of text messages and emails being sent between family members across the country.  Both times, I knew my mom and my brother-in-law David were keeping things under control as I traveled, but I wanted to be there to see what was going on for myself.  After I had arrived and had checked things out, both times I reported in to the rest of the family, and only then did I feel like I could breathe. 

On both of those days, I considered driving to the airport to pick up Jennifer when her flight came in but was afraid to leave, and so both times I asked my aunt to get Jennifer to us as quickly as possible.  Both times I remember feeling relieved to be there but at the same time feeling restless, as if I needed to have something to do in the chaos of what was going on around me.  On both occasions, there was an air of surrealism in the knowledge of what was about to occur, and both times the room was filled with emotion.

Jennifer swept in with a sense of purpose like I’d seldom seen before in both cases.  Both times I watched her hug Nancy, David, and my mom, and then when she hugged me I felt such a sense of relief that she was there with us.  There was an intimacy in the room that is difficult to describe, one that created an odd sense of control in a situation that we knew could not be controlled.

The second time, the tears we cried were of joy and excitement and relief; the happiness in the room was like a salve.  Again, those of us in the room made phone calls and sent messages to others who weren’t there, this time with the news of a new beginning.

The Sweetness of Life

There are some things that so easily serve to bring us joy in life, to make us remember that we are lucky to be wherever we are, to show us perspective if only we are willing to see it:

A ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds after a storm

The sound of shells tinkling that can only be heard in the stillness underneath the ocean

The sweet surprise on a newborn baby's face when his eyes focus on something for the first time

The taste of too-strong kool aid

The sound of a grandparent singing a made-up song to a grandchild

The sound of siblings laughing at something only they recognize as funny

The drop of one's stomach on that first downhill of a roller coaster

The sight of a loved one's face in a photograph

The sound of crickets on a summer night with no curfew

The tears of pride that come from witnessing your child show kindness to another person

The pride felt as the National Anthem is played during an Olympic medal ceremony

Hearing a song on the radio that holds special meaning

Seeing the color of a flower as it's just begun to bloom

Seeing a baby smile in his sleep

Smelling honeysuckle, wisteria, or hyacinths at the start of a new season

Opening a new book, full of anticipation for the words ahead, and

Closing it later with the swell of satisfaction from the read.

Mustering up the courage to set a goal, to try something different and new, 

With a parachute of surrounding support from friends and family.

What Grief Can Look and Feel Like

A friend of mine recently lost her father, and she has asked me about what’s “normal” in grief.  Hmmmm.  First, I will say that I am perhaps not the right person to ask that question of, as I am not only unsure about the answer but also because I think that even my speculation about the answer may be more confusing that it is right.  And next I will say that one of the things I do know about grief is that there really isn’t a “normal” to it. 

Through the reaching out of others with whom I have connected through this blog, I have begun to see that, although grief may have some universal similarities to it, it is not experienced in the same way by any two people.  There’s not a right or a wrong way to do it.  Going through the grieving process often seems to make people feel like they are feeling abnormal – but that’s normal, I think.  Grief is just grief, and, in spite of the things it may cause people to do or say or think or feel, it doesn’t mean that the person who is grieving is flawed, or sick, or selfish, or crazy, or depressed. 

 Grief can look like thousand different things, mostly painful and confusing but some inspiring and strengthening, if one chooses to let them be. I think that the idea of death and dying, the difficulty of grasping such a HUGE concept, as well as the questions that come along with it like WHY and WHAT NEXT sometimes makes our brains think things we wouldn’t ordinarily think.  One thing I have learned by putting my story out there publicly is that whatever’s going on in one’s head in the midst of the grief is very likely to be something someone else has/is also thinking or feeling; maybe knowing that will help someone else not feel quite as alone as they walk the road of grief and mourning. 

Lots of times grief feels like walking in a fog, without any direction at all.  It looks like breaking down into tears in the middle of driving to work or making dinner or taking a shower.  It looks like reading the same passage over and over again and then saying “To hell with it” when the words on the page still don’t seem to make sense.  It looks like waking up in the middle of the night and forgetting what has happened just for a second or two, and then remembering and feeling the slam of the sadness all over again.  Sometimes it feels like a force making you want to stay in bed – even if that means missing a meal or a party or work or the entire holiday season.  Sometimes it feels like a force that won't let you sleep - or that fill the sleep that does come with nightmares and sadness.

Grief can make it feel as if the world is spinning, it can make things look fuzzy, and it can make your legs feel heavy like cement and your heart feel broken and raw.  It can make you feel overly bold or brave … or it can make you feel small and terrified, all the time.  It can sometimes make a simple task or decision feel like climbing a mountain.  It can look like staring into space; it can make you feel like you can’t function, and – here’s the brutal truth – it can make you not really care if you can’t.

Grief can look like laughter – or rage – or avoidance – or more tears that you ever thought your body could manufacture.  It can make the world look like a minefield, full of danger.  It can feel like walking into a room full of strangers who have no idea what you’re thinking or feeling or what you’ve been through – and it can also feel like being all alone in a completely empty room, full of only coldness and hard edges and with an echo.  It can feel like holding onto a secret that has been locked away or supporting a boulder so big that it’s incomprehensible to think about ever doing anything besides struggling under its weight.  It can feel like going on a hunt, looking for a glimpse of any good at all in the world, a desperate search and an endless list of questions and worries and fears.

It can look like an endless road, and, in a way, that’s what I think it is, and I think maybe the secret to getting through it is knowing that there is no secret to getting through it. 

All Done

In the months after my dad's death, I went to weekly meetings of a grief support group that was comprised of people who had lost a loved one at some point within the past year.  There were about a dozen group members, ranging in age from a college student to a woman in her 70's.  At the second meeting, we were asked to go around the circle with each of us telling what we had been thinking about that week. One woman, who had lost her adult daughter to cancer, said she had sat for hours staring at a pile of blank thank-you note cards that she knew she needed to write to thank people who had helped her during her daughter's illness and during the week of the funeral.  She said that she just hadn't been able to start the process of writing the notes.  She thought for a minute, obviously deep in thought, and then quietly said to the group, "I guess I feel like if I get those notes written, I'll be all done with the whole process of taking care of details for my daughter.  Of my grief process.  Maybe even of my daughter, and that's not something I think I can survive."  Tears fell silently down my face as I listened to her talk and wished with all my heart that I didn't understand just what she meant.

I feel that way about talking about my dad's illness, about his life, and about my grief.  If I stop talking (writing) about it, I feel like I'll be all done, and, like the woman in the support group, that's not something I think I can survive.

Damn, I miss him, every day.

At Least A Thousand Times More

Today is the fifth of the month, and, like the fifth of all the other months that have marked the time since I last spent time with my dad on this earth, it's not an easy day for me.

Every month I wonder if there will ever come the fifth of a month on which I won't feel this way.  I don't think so, at least not for at least a thousand times more or so.

I thought I could make it through the day this time around without writing about my dad or my grief, a new kind of milestone that I feel a weird kind of obligation to reach towards, even though it seems unnatural - and, truth be told, so sad and disrespectful I can't really allow myself to think about it much.  

It's been 30 months.  My god that's hard to believe.  But not as hard as it is not to be able to talk to him except in the format of a one-sided conversation.  

Today I've been thinking about the last time I saw him before we knew he was sick, which was on an extended family vacation in upstate New York.  My husband, my daughters, and I hugged my dad and my mom goodbye as we headed off towards our respective gates at the airport at the end of the trip; I don't specifically remember hugging my dad then, but I'm sure I did.  And I'm sure I thought I would see him at least a thousand times more, with both of us happy and healthy.

I can't help myself from thinking back to things that happened when he was sick, and sometimes the memories and the visions of those things haunt me - like how I used scissors to cut the hospital bracelet from his wrist both times when he came home from the hospital - and how the way I felt when doing so was so completely different on each of those occasions.  The first time, he was still recovering from brain surgery and we were still reeling from the news of the devastating diagnosis and preparing for him to go to Duke for the treatment that we thought would save him.  The second time, we had brought him home on hospice, to save him from the spiraling misery that was going on in the hospital, with hope of a different brand.  The second time, I saved the bracelet after I'd cut it from his wrist; I put it in my purse as if that made sense or a difference in anything that was going on. 

I think back to the packed-up box of stuff from his office, the contents of which would seem meaningless, perhaps junky even, to a stranger but were of exactly the opposite to us in value. I don't know where most of that stuff is now; I guess it doesn't matter, except for when it feels like it does.

I can clearly remember the moments during which the news of the diagnosis was delivered to us, and I remember so well the feeling of hope that the statistics wouldn't, and didn't, apply to him, or to us.  It was as if that Hope was our magic carpet, our oxygen, our blood; to live, we needed to believe that he would live.  I sometimes wish that I didn't remember some of those moments or the rapid decline and the series of let-downs and failures and disappointments from the second and final time that we spent with him in the hospital; that was like being caught in a fishing net, and it forced us to reconsider what we thought about almost everything.  I try to think back to the full weight of the feelings of helplessness, of guilt, of terror, and of powerlessness that crept in during that time, before they were overtaken by resignation and different shades of the previous emotions. But I'm not sure; I think they just gradually took hold of me over the course of the last three weeks of his life, and I have to say I haven't quite shaken most of them yet.

At the end of that trip to upstate New York, my immediate family ended up being stuck at the airport in Albany because of a delayed flight due to thunderstorms across the country; my parents made it out on their flight on time.  After they's gotten home, Dad texted me to check on us and commiserated with me about the inconvenience of the lateness of our adjusted schedule.  "I hope you make it home ok," he texted when I told him that our plane had finally been cleared for take off, the second-to-last time he would text me, ever.  And only five months later, I said goodbye to my dad for the very last time, and, in the early hours of the morning later that night, I laid my head down on the pillow to try to sleep and found myself crying so hard that tears threatened to fill my ears.  I tried to stop but couldn't, and then I squeezed my eyes shut and felt that same message flash from me to my dad:  "I hope you make it home ok," I thought between sobs, and then I added,  "I miss you, I can't believe this whole thing happened, and I don't think I can make it without you" - thoughts that would run through my head at least a thousand times more between then and now.

Ironwoman

I recently read an article about a woman that I find to be very inspiring.  Her name is Kristin McQueen, and here's her story:

Ten years ago Kristin was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer.  Since then, she has had fifteen major surgeries and has undergone various cancer treatments including radiation on her brain.  To date, she has finished seventeen marathons and nine full Ironman competitions.  She has continued to train during her fight with cancer, she says, because when she's out there on the road she is in control, not cancer.  I think that's pretty badass. 

“Ironman is so much more than an endurance race," she says. "It is not about simply propelling myself 140.6 miles for kicks, it’s about challenging my limits and seeing what’s possible. It’s about reclaiming my body after five neck surgeries, two rounds of radiation, ten brain surgeries, and a slew of acquired physical challenges. It’s about not giving into all the limitations that cancer and its buddies have imposed on me, but viewing them as challenges that ultimately make the race even sweeter by overcoming them. It’s about going from not being able to open my eyes without getting sick, having difficulty sitting upright and being too weak to stand by myself to completing one of the ultimate tests of human endurance. It’s about raising money so that nobody else has to go through what I have. It’s about remembering those who have passed and honoring those who fight every day to live a 'normal' life despite a disease that tries to tear them down.”

As anyone who follows Ironman competitions knows, the Ironman Championship is held in October each year in Kona, Hawaii, and participants in the race have to qualify to enter.  It's "the big one," the granddaddy of all triathlons and one of the most rigorous events in sporting.

This year, the World Triathlon Corporation is giving seven athletes the opportunity to race at Kona though a program called Kona Inspired.  Each entrant in the contest has uploaded a 90-second video showing how their story relates to the theme of the contest, which is "Anything is Possible," and those who get the most votes will get to enter the race.  Kristin wants one of those slots.

If you are also inspired by this Ironwoman, here's how you can help, in three quick and easy steps:

1. Watch this video.
2. Vote for Kristin every day between now and May 7, 2013.
3. Share the info on Facebook and Twitter and any other social media feeds you have - and email the link out to others who may not be into social media.  Ask everyone you know to vote for Kristin!

Kristin, sporting a "SUCK IT, CANCER" message during a race

For at least a dozen years before he got sick, my dad always called or emailed me ahead of time to alert me to whenever an Ironman triathlon was coming on TV so I could watch, and many times he called me on the phone during the race so we could talk about it.  Every single time I have watched an Ironman on TV, I have cried.  I don't mind admitting it; I find not only the talent but also (and probably especially) the dedication and just the raw guts that it takes to go the distance so awe-inspiring, but it's the stories of the back-of-the-packers that get me going every time.  Even if you're not an Ironman fan (an Ironfan?), you know the storyline: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I'm not sure which trumps which: the tears of the competitors who realize they will not be able to finish - or the tears of those who are crossing the finish line.  Either way, I can't imagine watching the race without being affected by those stories.

My dad wanted so badly to finish an Ironman competition; just a few days before he got sick - which was just a couple of weeks before his debut Ironman - he said he hoped to finish the event in less than twelve hours but that he would be happy just to finish at all.  After months of training and miles and miles on the road and in the pool, his chance to compete in the Ironman-North Carolina in 2010 was stolen from him by cancer, so unbelievably sad and so damn unfair.  As Kristin says, "Cancer is bullshit!"

Kristin has succeeded in finishing an Ironman - in fact, nine of them!  Most people feel they are giving their all when they finish a 5K, even if they are 100% healthy; Kristin has far surpassed that, while battling cancer. By any standard, she is already an Ironwoman, worthy of great respect and admiration for her athletic accomplishments.  The championship race in Kona, though, is within her reach, and I can't think of anyone who better embodies the idea that anything is possible.  With our help, she can make it there.

Good luck, Kristin; cancer can indeed SUCK IT!  I look forward to watching you amongst the other participants in the race on TV in October.  I can guarantee that I'll be watching - and crying.

Memories and Exit Ramps

Traveling along the highway of life with a luggage rack loaded with grief, it often seems there are endless reasons and opportunities for taking an exit ramp, as situations and conversations bring forth memories from previous experiences related to pain and loss.  I try to keep my eyes focused only on the space illuminated by the headlights directly in front of me, but sometimes things on the side of the road or off in the distance catch my eye, and looking at and even following those sightings cannot be avoided. There are lots of things along the way that I didn't think I was going to have to face - some of which I hadn't even be aware before I'd traveled this very road - and, once I was and once I did, that we didn't think I was nearly strong enough to traverse. The triggers that force me to exit for pit stops can come from varying sources - reading about or hearing about someone else with a similar story, being asked for advice related to my own struggle, or even just watching others about whom I care go through a trial like my family has since the time when my dad got sick.

Interestingly, I think, at some of those exits are emotions that are strangely unlike those I felt while I was beginning my own journey down this rough part of the road, in this construction zone of sorts.  I remember the feelings of powerlessness, sadness, confusion, and anger from during that time, but, looking at it at this point through my "things may appear smaller than actual size" rearview mirror, especially if I am able to offer anything at all to someone else from this vantage point, makes me feel strong and useful, ... a Silver Lining I suppose, one that I hope translates into a benefit for someone other than just myself. 

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been slowed in the right-hand lane as I've watched my friend and her family bring her father to hospice care on Friday two weeks ago and then say goodbye to him on the following Wednesday, the exact time frame that my family had with my dad.  I remember how in my family's situation there was so much to do, an overwhelming amount of things in fact, and then there was nothing.  I know all too well the pain and the helplessness and the feelings of such utter loss and despair that they were feeling as they prepared for the funeral, and I remember how I thought things couldn't get any harder but then how in many ways it seemed like they did after I went home after the memorial service and found my job and other responsibilities waiting for me.  After my dad's illness and his death, it felt like the emptiness, the loneliness, and all the other emotions were something with which I didn't think I could cope or even survive, but somehow I found a way, as I know my friend and others in her family will too.

In addition to having the perspective from inside the rawness of the grief, I now have somewhat of an idea of what it felt like for those around me in those early days of peregrination; it feels like running in place or maybe like being on a scavenger hunt of sorts.  There is so little that can be done to ease the pain of those who have been forced to enter onto this highway; the best I can try to do is just to ease off the gas pedal in my own vehicle to let them merge into my lane, to give them a nod of acknowledgement, to let them know that they are not alone.

"There is a sacredness in tears" ~ Washington Irving

Not Knowing - Grandmom's Story, Part 5

Continued from Grandmom's Story, Part 4

Mourning the loss of my grandmother in between the time that she died and the time of her funeral brought with it many emotions; even in the midst of the series of aftershocks that my family felt as a result of the compounded, extended grief after first my dad's death and then his mother's, I found it hard to believe that she was really gone.  She had been slipping away - and it could even be argued that she had already slipped away in essentially all forms except for the physical - for several years, and we knew her time was near, but not coming together as a family to grieve during those few weeks made it difficult for me to accept.  

I knew that I wanted to be prepared to say something about her life to those who would gather to honor her memory; I spent many nights sitting up, intending to write down what I wanted to say but not being able to, either because the words just wouldn't come or because the tears that flowed kept me from being able to see clearly enough to record my thoughts on paper.  I re-read some of the many letters that Grandmom had written to me over the years, and I looked at lots and lots of photos of her from during her life, many of which had also been taken with my dad by her side.  I created a slideshow of many of the pictures and selected background music to go along with it.  None of it helped me to process things or to come up with what I felt were the right words to say as a tribute, though; I ended up leaving to make the trip to the town where my grandmother had lived for 5 decades and some change - and where my dad had grown up - without a firm idea of the words that I wanted to say during the memorial service.

My husband, my daughters, and I met my mom, my sister Nancy, and her husband David at the hotel where we were staying for the weekend; many of the members of my dad's side of our extended family were staying at that same hotel, and, after not having seen the majority of them since I was a teenager, it was a little surreal to keep running into them a little at a time in different settings, in the hotel elevator, the lobby, the parking lot, and the Waffle House next door to the hotel.  I had to tell myself countless times to hold it together, because, as each layer of the family reunited, the subject of my dad's very unexpected illness and death was naturally piggybacked onto that of my grandmother's passing, a recurrent one-two punch that I didn't think I had near the stamina to withstand.  

I didn't sleep much the night before the funeral; I felt unsettled and almost inconsolable.  I texted back and forth with my sister Jennifer who had not been able to make the trip from California that weekend, and together we came up with a message that I planned to communicate at the service the next day.

It's difficult to organize a funeral from out of town, especially in a town with limited resources and where one has limited connections - and especially in a state of compounded grief.  Not knowing what the best thing to do would be, we planned to have the service at the funeral home and then, at the invitation of the members of my grandmother's church, to have fellowship and food afterwards at the church.  Based on a decision my parents had made before my dad had gotten sick, my grandmother's body had been cremated, and my mom had the task of transporting her remains to the funeral home, allowing my grandmother an opportunity to go home in yet another sense.

                       Click to view the slideshow from my grandmother's funeral

When we arrived at the funeral home, we took a few minutes to set up the video projector and my computer so that the slideshow of photos of Grandmom could be shown on the wall of the chapel before the service, and then we met briefly with the funeral director, at which point it came to light that a burial service was not planned as part of the arrangements for that day.  When that realization hit me, I felt the floor drop out from underneath me; it seemed so utterly disrespectful and as if Grandmom's death - and her life - were being disregarded.  I hadn't known that a ceremony for the burial hadn't been planned, and I felt strongly that as a family we needed to lay her to rest, essentially to take the opportunity to do the last thing that we would ever be able to do for her - and maybe for my dad as well.  In the midst of the back-and-forth banter about if and how the arrangements could be changed, my brother-in-law David saw the look on my face and took the funeral director aside.  I'm not sure what he said to the guy, but a few minutes later David came back over and said, "After the memorial service, immediate family can meet the funeral director at the gravesite for the burial of the ashes; is that ok?"  I felt hot tears of gratitude and grief spring to my eyes, and a minute later we were called to come into the chapel for the service to begin.  

The music was playing and the photos of Grandmom were being projected as planned; again things seemed surreal, and I felt as if I were floating to my seat on the front pew.  My father's brothers were in the aisle behind us; his sister had not been able to attend from out-of-state due to her own poor health.  As the music ended, the minister from my grandmother's church stepped up to the microphone and began the service; my grandmother and this woman had not known each other, but the minister knew of my grandmother and certainly of the decades of service that she had given to the church.  She gave an eloquent sermon, a fitting tribute to a woman who had so loved her church and her community and the people of both.  After she had finished, she invited me to come up and speak on behalf of the family.  I pulled out my scribbled notes, and here is what I said:

I know that my grandmother truly appreciated the love of all of you and that she would want to thank everyone who helped her during her life, just as she helped so many of us with her smile, her openness, and her perspective.  So thank you to everyone who visited her and kept her company over the years and to those who ran errands for her once her vision began to fail, especially those who drove her to her doctor's appointments and to Fairfax Methodist Church, which she loved so much.  She would also definitely want to thank my mom and my dad, who did such an amazing job caring for her, particularly over the past few years.  When my dad was sick, he worried so much about his mother.  My mom promised him that she would be there for Grandmom, just as she and Dad had always been, and she was.  When Grandmom passed, Mom was with her, holding her hand, and, for that and for everything else, Mom, Grandmom would want to thank you, and I do too.  

I finished up by thanking people for coming to honor my grandmother's life, although the exact words that I said to convey that part of the message probably got lost somewhere in the midst of my tears, which had started as soon as I said, "When my dad was sick, ..."   I am not a crier.  I felt somehow that my uncontrollable tear-shedding was something of which Dad and Grandmom would not approve - and possibly even something they wouldn't understand; I could almost hear them telling me from behind the scenes to get it together, but I just couldn't do it.  I looked over at my family and at my dad's brothers as I walked back toward my seat on the pew, and I saw that they were all crying too.  The sadness was palpable in the air; after the family members had walked from the chapel into the lobby, we could still hear one man in particular sobbing.  We later found out that it was one of Grandmom's long-time neighbors; while I felt great sorrow at the man's apparent grief, it was a touching reminder of my grandmother's impact and that she had touched so many people, many of whom we didn't even know.  

After the service, family members congregated in the foyer and thanked people for coming as they filed out in the parking lot.  In a quiet moment, I told my dad's cousins Carl and his sister about the dream I had had about their grandfather; the three of us agreed that we were comforted by the thought that our loved ones who had gone on ahead were together now.

After that, we drove to the cemetery and parked near the place where my grandfather had been buried many years before.  The funeral home director and his assistant met us there with a flowers from the service and a shovel; we stood quietly with the sun beaming down on us as we watched the burial of Grandmom's ashes.  It was a simple ceremony, but yet it felt tender and unabridged. 

I will never forget the meal afterwards at the church where my grandmother had been a member for over 50 years, where she had volunteered as the church librarian, and where a couple of years ago the church library was dedicated to her.  The food, which had been prepared by church members, many of whom had been friends of Grandmom’s for decades and some of whom had known Dad since he was young, nourished more than just our bodies.  We didn’t  know most of them, and most of them didn’t know us; but we knew each other’s hearts because we all knew Grandmom, and she was nothing if not heart and spirit. 

Before we said our goodbyes and left the church, we went upstairs to the library that bore my grandmother's name.  We admired the plaque with the engraved dedication to her for her years of service to the church, and we thumbed through some of the neatly organized books on the shelves in the room.  My sister and I came across several sticky-notes tucked inside books; on the notes were two things that made us smile: the name of Dad's business, letting us know that he had donated some office supplies to the library, and a sampling of Grandmom's unique style of penmanship; she had written notes about each book, possibly to herself or maybe to future readers.  

After we'd gotten back to the hotel, some of our group decided to go antiquing in a few nearby stores; my sister Nancy and I walked to a convenience store and bought some beer, and then we sat in the sun and drank it, still wearing our funeral dresses, on the tailgate of my husband's truck in the parking lot in back of the hotel.  Whether it was the sun or the beer or the company - or a combination of all three, sitting out there felt somewhat curative; we knew it was exactly what Dad would have done had he been there, and somehow knowing that helped a little bit, too.

My grandparents' house, where my dad grew up

The next day, we packed up the car and drove around the little town one last time.  We ended our tour by driving past the old textile mill where both of my grandparents had worked for almost all of their adult lives.  The building was in the midst of being torn down, overseas outsourcing having taken the work that had provided a living for many of the townspeople for so many years.  I watched in the side mirror as the mill got smaller and smaller as we drove away, and I felt unexpectedly sad to know that this would probably be the last time I would ever come to this place, a town that held so much of my grandmother and my dad - and even a little bit of me. 

"The Mill"