Two years ago today, my grandma passed away. Earlier in the week, I had sung at the funeral of one grandma. On a Wednesday morning, my dad called to tell me my other grandma passed away.
Two funerals. Two grandmas. One month.
It was a really awful month.
I still miss my grandma a lot, but I'm no longer filled with grief. I know that Grams is with Grandpa. Most importantly, I know she had put her faith in Jesus and she's singing with the angels in Heaven.
I doubt my girls will have clear memories of my grandma. They'll have memories of pictures of her, and they'll have memories of the stories I tell.
She was amazing. She was adventurous. She had style and class and dignity. She loved me and spoiled me rotten.
Two months after my grandma's funeral, I was pregnant. If we had a girl I knew what her middle name would be.
Harriet.
Both my grandmas were named Harriet.
Both my grandmas would have loved Adelynn, and she would have delighted them to no end with her smiles and personality.
Addie won't ever meet her great-grandma Harriets on this side of heaven, but she will hear stories about them, and carry the blessing of their name around with her.
Thinking of my grandma today, and missing her so much.
I'm just super grateful for all the lessons she taught me, all the memories I have of her, and that I got to be part of her life.
I didn't work the five months before Sydney was born. I'm not entirely sure what I did to keep myself busy since I didn't have any children or a job, but I think the house was probably really clean, the meals well prepared, and the laundry was all caught up. Those were the days.
I also remember that I occasionally watched daytime tv because...why not? One afternoon I watched an episode of Oprah where she was talking about photography or birthdays or mothers or all three, I don't remember. But I remember a segment about a mom who took a birthday picture of her kids, and every year she'd use the same prop: a hat, I think.
The whole idea inspired me to do something similar with Sydney, and I knew exactly what prop to use: a dress that was sitting in a closet at my parents' house. The box had been marked, "Nancy's Hippy Dresses" and there was in fact a fabulously hippy dress in that box that I had never had the guts to wear, but had always thought was really cool. How amazing, I thought, would it be to have my daughter wear the same dress that had once belonged to her grandma?
When Sydney turned one, I pulled out the dress and started the tradition.
The first three years I couldn't convince her to wear the dress, but I did get her with the dress.
~2005~
~2006~
~2007~
~2008~
Sydney decided she loved wearing the dress, and could hardly be persuaded to take it off.
~2009~
Sydney wanted to keep wearing the dress even after her birthday, but I know how little girls and dress-up dresses are, and this one needs to last at least until Syd's 18.
Last summer, after the birthday photoshoot, I decided to see if I could find an original photo of my mom wearing the dress. She and I scoured through albums, although she couldn't quite remember if the dress actually had belonged to her afterall. I felt a momentary surge of panic. What if the dress was just some random dress, belonging to a stranger?
We leafed through the 1974 album and towards the end of the album we saw this:
The dress hadn't belonged to my mom. It had belonged to my grandma. Here she was, sitting next to my aunt and my mom, wearing the dress at a party. It's the only picture we have of her wearing the dress.
I asked my grandma if she remembered the photo or the dress, but she didn't. Who even knows exactly why the dress was saved in a box to begin with; it just was.
The fact that the dress belonged to my grandma and not my mom did not disappoint me. In fact, I thought it was pretty amazing that the dress had somehow been saved because my grandma didn't save anything, especially clothes. If you knew my grandma you would know it is no small miracle that any article of her clothing that was older than a year managed to not find its way to the Goodwill. The woman was stylish, people. Old clothes did not hang in her closet.
This year, I pulled out the dress again.
I held the dress that once upon a time my grandma wore. I put it to my face, felt the fabric on my skin, and even put the dress on (it turns out hippy dresses are very forgiving of pregnant figures). I didn't feel some magic closeness to my grandma through the dress, but I smiled as I imagined her wearing it. Imagined her smoothing out the folds, zipping up the back, tying it. It was hers--even though she was not a hippy at all--she had this dress. And it was stylish enough for her to wear it to a party.
And now thirty-six years later, her great-granddaughter is wearing it, twirling in it, telling me how much she loves the dress and could she please please please wear it to church even though it has half a dozen pins in it in order to keep it from falling off her.
Every year, when we celebrate Sydney's birthday, I plan on photographing her wearing the dress her great-grandma once wore...the dress that somehow got saved in a box marked "Nancy's Hippy Dresses," a box I discovered one afternoon more than a dozen years ago.
Every year, we'll celebrate Sydney, my grandma, and the dress that miraculously got saved.
A month ago, I sat in church at my grandma's funeral, Jason on one side, my dear friend Megan on the other. A month ago, in that church filled with family and friends, I was trying to keep some kind of composure because I would be singing at the funeral.
Four days before she passed away, right after hearing me sing at my Grandma Stout's funeral, Grandma Larson asked me to sing "His Eye is On the Sparrow" at her funeral. Her request was inspired not only by hearing me sing that Monday and many times before, but also because she had heard that Grandma Stout had written in her Bible, underneath the hymn title "Meet Me There": This is the song I want sung at my funeral.
Grandma told my aunt Jane, I want Stephanie to sing "His Eye is on the Sparrow" at my funeral.
When I heard her request--only a few hours after I had received the awful phone call from my dad--I knew that I had to do it, no matter what, no matter how hard it would be. And it would be hard. As sure as I knew anything, I knew singing at my grandma's funeral was going to be one of the hardest things I had ever done.
*
I had intended to spend the month of November writing about my grandma, writing about the loss of both of my grandmas, but particularly Grandma Larson who lived next door to me and whose life was inextricably threaded into mine. I wanted to write about her surviving breast cancer twice, how she loved to travel, how she passed along her love of jewelry--especially diamonds--to me. I wanted to capture everything--her favorite color was purple, her chocolate chip cookies were amazing, her faith in Jesus was inspiring.
She loved to shop.
She loved her four children, her ten grandchildren, her 17 great-grandchildren, and her 1 great-great-grandchild.
She played the piano.
She hated weeds and loved flowers.
Yesterday would have been 71 years since she had married my grandpa.
She liked to drink hot tea.
She got a manicure and a pedicure every two weeks.
I had planned on writing about all this during November, but I couldn't do it. It was just too emotionally difficult to sit at the computer every night and type, the tears springing immediately to my eyes as soon as my left index finger hit the letter g on the keyboard. The void was still too much to dwell on it night after night. The stories are still in my head, and eventually I will tell them. Maybe not here, but somewhere.
*
The writing I did do, however, allowed me some freedom to lose my composure. This writing, tonight, allows me to lose some composure. When I rehearsed the song for the funeral, I was keenly aware that I would not allow myself to lose my composure. I couldn't. Singing at my grandma's funeral was more than just getting up in front of people and singing. I've done that hundreds of times.
Singing at my grandma's funeral was the one thing I wanted to do to show people how much I loved my grandma, that even in my darkest hour I still believed His eye is on the sparrow.
Forty days ago, I lost my grandma. Thirty-two days ago I sat through her funeral.
In Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking, she writes in the very last sentence, "No eye is on the sparrow."
I loved that book, and it helped give voice to a lot of my grief, but Joan Didion was wrong. I don't believe that no eye is on the sparrow. If I had believed it I never would have been able to sing at my grandma's funeral. If I had believed it I never would have found any measure of comfort in the past month.
It's not just that I believe His eye is on the sparrow, I know it. Unequivocally. Unashamedly. Known.
Asking me to sing at her funeral was my grandma's final gift for me, and in a way, a gift to everyone who came to her funeral. She knew that one day she would slip into eternity, and what she wanted me to know beyond a shadow of a doubt--to believe it so deeply I could sing it in my greatest grief--is that His eye is on the sparrow.
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know, I know, I know He watches over me.
I can't explain it exactly, but my brain has felt like a big blank this past week, unable to organize my thoughts in a coherent fashion. I know it's because the holidays are coming up, and for as much as I'm looking forward to them, I'm also feeling sad and missing my grandmas so much my heart aches.
While of course I'm excited about Thanksgiving this year because it's our first as Family Farm residents, I've become keenly aware that my role in the meal has changed. It's always been my grandma and my mom that do Thanksgiving, and I've always been the one who sits around chatting and eating olives like I've always done. It's true: I can be absolutely worthless when it comes to kitchen help.
A couple weeks ago, when my mom started planning Thanksgiving, she called me to start organizing everything. "You'll have to come over early this year," she said. "You'll be helping me out."
Her words hit me with an unexpected panic and gravity. This is the year everything changes. This is the year that I don't get to sit around being the entertaining daughter and granddaughter. I don't have any excuses to sit back and do nothing. This year, I'm stepping up into the role that my mom once filled, and my mom is now the cook in charge.
To my girls, the kitchen scene will be just as I remembered it as a kid. To them the characters are all the same. The grandma and the mom will spend the morning in the kitchen, prepping the turkey, fixing the bean casserole, keeping the kids' fingers out of the pies. The kids will play in the basement, unconsciously absorbing the sounds of Thanksgiving being prepared.
The picture will look just as it looked so many years ago when my mom had her first Thanksgiving meal on the Family Farm, her mom by her side, her baby girl unknowingly watching a holiday tradition that would last 33 years.
To my girls, Thanksgiving will be the same scene I watched so many times.
To me, having been witness to that very first Thanksgiving on the Family Farm, this Thursday will appear almost the same but not quite. As if a hand has reached in and rearranged the characters, dropping familiar faces into different spots. My mom at the oven. Me at the kitchen sink.
A lot is written about our veterans, and deservedly so. I have nothing but gratitude for those who serve our country through their military service.
A lot is also written about The Greatest Generation. My grandparents were part of this generation. Both my grandpas fought in WWII. My maternal* grandpa (the one who lived next door) briefly fought in World War II, and then also in the Korean War (I've written about his brave combat service here). My grandma didn't fight in the war. She didn't work in a factory. She wouldn't have ever identified with Rosie the Riveter.
But she raised four kids. Often without my grandpa around.
I heard someone ask her once how she managed to raise those little kids by herself. How could she keep the house clean? Cook meals? Do laundry? Do everything by herself? How could she do it?
"Well," she said, "I just did it because that's what I had to do."
And that was that.
This Veterans Day, I remember not only my grandpa who served 20 years in the Army, but also my grandma, who raised a family while my grandpa served. She may not have earned a purple heart like my grandpa did, and she never climbed the ranks to achieve "Major" status, but her work was still vitally important. She loved the Army, even if that meant the Army made her job a little harder sometimes.
Many, many years after my grandpa retired from the Army, my grandma had one last role in supporting my grandpa's military service.
The Army that had made her responsibilities so much more difficult those 20 years my grandpa was in the service gave her one final task, one that was perhaps the hardest of all.
She took the flag, held it tightly, and listened to the soldier solemnly thank her "on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army" for her husband's faithful service.
I'll never forget seeing my grandpa's flag-covered casket, or watching the young soldier present the tightly wrapped American flag to my grandma, or hearing the gun-salute crack through the cold February air.
Forever I'll remember the sacrifice my grandpa made.
Forever I'll remember my grandma's sacrifice as well.
When my grandpa joined the Army, he asked my grandma--his friend and neighbor--if she would send him a picture and write to him so that his name would get called during mail call. She wrote to him. I don't know what exactly she wrote, but it was enough to capture my grandpa's heart. In 1938, they got married. And just like that, Grandma was an Army wife.
My grandma often talked about how much she loved the Army. Even just a few days before she passed away, she said again to my youngest brother, "I loved the Army." Considering this small town girl hadn't been to a big city until she was 17, getting a life of moving from place to place--all over the country and the world--was an exciting life for her. It was hard too, but she loved it. She did not want to be a farmer's wife. She grew up a farmer's daughter, and she figured whatever the Army had to offer her was bound to be better than farming.
So many of her stories of Army life blend together in my mind. There were homes that had bugs; homes that had squeaky floors; homes that needing painting. In Japan, they had women who helped her with the cleaning and admired my aunt and my mom's blonde hair. Oh, how she loved having women help her with the daily chores.
Since I got to travel quite a bit with my grandparents, I often was able to see the different places my grandpa had been stationed, sometimes even driving by the house they might have lived in. In 1997, my family went to Hawaii with my grandparents. We drove through the neighborhood they had once lived in; we walked around Tripler Army Hospital where my grandpa had worked; we visited the friends they had had when they lived in Honolulu.
It has never been far from my mind that my grandpa was in the military. I can hardly bear to watch World War II movies because I always picture my grandpa as a young kid fighting in the war. He didn't talk much about his Army days.
My grandma, on the other hand, loved to talk about her Army days. Her experience makes me smile. It wouldn't be a life I would want, but then again, I didn't have the childhood she had. From Washington to Oregon to California to Nevada to Japan and finally Hawaii, it was the Army that took my grandma where she wanted to go.
She might have been a small town girl who grew up during the Great Depression, but she had big dreams. That's why she loved the Army.
I don't want it to go unnoticed that I have appreciated the many kind words you have all sent my direction. The emails, the comments, the prayers--to say that I am grateful for the outpouring of kindness doesn't fully capture my heart. But that's what I have for you. Gratefulness. Thank you for thinking of me.
When we moved from Oregon to Washington, we left behind a wonderful support system of friends. I still keep in touch with many of them through their blogs, Facebook updates, and occasional visits, but for obvious reasons I don't get to see them as much as I used to. Nevertheless, through these past few weeks I've never once felt alone in my grief. Your words have been a huge comfort.
Jason and I knew that we'd need to make new friends when we moved here, but we've been a little slow at getting connected with others. Fortunately, we have lots of family nearby so we never feel lonely. Also fortunately, we have some old high school pals that live in Portland.
While plenty of high school friendships go by the wayside after graduation, of all the friendships I was disappointed I hadn't kept up with, my friendship with my best friend Megan was at the top of the list. We kept in touch through college, and she was in my wedding, but after we both entered the workforce then life kind of got in the way and we lost track of each other.
Last spring, thanks to the networking wonders of Facebook, I managed to reconnect with Megan. To tell you the truth, when I saw her friend request waiting in my email inbox, I burst into tears. I hadn't seen Megan in ten years.
We agreed to meet for lunch at the Kennedy School (never a bad place to have lunch, as my Portland friends will agree). Even though it had been ten years, we still knew each other. Which is to say, we were still so much the same as we had always been. We were friends.
We made another lunch date, this time meeting up with another high school friend who was briefly in town.
That's Megan in the center (holding her sweet daughter) and our friend Sarah on the far right.
Since last spring, Megan and I have continued to meet up for lunch dates. Our families have gotten together (and hooray! the husbands and children get along splendidly). It's just been so amazing that God answered my prayer for a local friend with the bestest friend I'd ever had.
On the day Grandma passed away, Megan called me to see if I wanted to have lunch the next day. We didn't manage to actually talk to each other, only setting up the lunch date through voice messages. I could tell by the messages that she was just calling just because, not because she had heard about Grandma.
By pure coincidence, Megan called me on the day of my deepest grief.
Except I don't think it wasn't a coincidence. It was an answer to prayer (Or as my aunt would say, "A God thing").
Megan sat next to me at Grandma's funeral. We had lunch again today (at the Kennedy School no less!). I have no doubt that we will not lose track of one another again.
I never presume to know how God works. He works in mysterious ways, and that's all I am certain of. But today I was reminded that people are not in my life accidentally. The comments and emails I've received from so many of you are not accidents. My living near my precious family is not an accident. My reconnecting with Megan was not an accident. Her phone call on the day Grandma died was not an accident.
My grief has been made lighter by my friends who have been intentionally placed in my life.
And that, sweet friends, is nothing short of amazing.
When I got home from school today, I asked Jason if he had heard about the shooting. Yes, he said. His mom told him when he had gone to pick up the girls from school.
"How'd you hear about it?" he asked.
"NPR." I have an 80-minute commute home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There's little world news I don't hear these days.
"NPR?" He was momentarily confused, and we realized we were talking about different things.
He wasn't, and had confused me talking about shooting with the topics of guns in general.
He was talking about a local school where our friend works--and where Jason subbed a couple weeks ago. A kid brought a loaded gun to school. In his backpack. Which he may or may not have intended to use. (This news report says he wasn't going to use it; our friend says otherwise. Either way there are some serious issues going on at the school.)
Today feels crazy.
I know my grandma--who loved the Army and the life it gave her--would have been so sad about Fort Hood.
My grandma enjoyed dolls. She didn't collect them or have lots of them, but she had a couple of very old dolls that she kept for awhile. This photo of her with her dolls was one of her favorites. She loved this picture so much, she had it framed and sitting in her bedroom.
I love this picture...it's so sweet: Those dolls sitting on the chair, my grandma looking like a little doll herself, the snow, the trees (clearly this picture was taken in Minnesota...there are few trees in North Dakota, and none where she lived).
I know Grandma wished she could have stayed a kid a little longer than she did. When she was 14, her dad made her quit school so she could help her mom take care of her six siblings. Her dad also hired her out as a "mother's helper" to other families; he wasn't a cruel man, but they needed the money and she was the oldest. She always resented not being able to finish school like her siblings did.
This picture captured a day when Grandma would have been allowed to be a kid, enjoying her dolls on a winter's day. A fond memory indeed.
After the funeral, there was a reception. And after the reception, there was the graveside service with just family.
The service itself was short. We had all said whatever it was we wanted to say at the funeral. We weren't there to talk.
We were there for some vague feeling of closure.
Not everyone thought it was a good idea to witness the burial, but I knew I had to be there. I had to see my grandma buried. I had to put the white rose on the casket, watch my daughters put the rose on the casket. I needed to watch the casket placed in the ground and see the dirt pile up.
The heavy machinery rolled in, dark exhaust fumes temporarily masking the scent of the hundreds of flowers that surrounded us. The workers were exact. Pour the dirt. Move the dirt around. Pour some more dirt. Tap the dirt with the backhoe. I was amazed at how one of the men was able to finesse the machine around with great precision and gentleness. The three (or maybe four?) men were respectful. Someone wondered later if they were acting differently on account of the 40 family members watching them.
No, said the chaplin. He had witnessed hundreds of burials, and those men were always the same. Respectful. Hard working. Good men, he called them.
They smoothed the dirt, arranged the headstone, placed the grass. Perhaps even now the lines of the sod have faded away and the grave looks as if it's always been there. Only the shiny "2009" plate will give away the newness of grief that grows with the grass.
Sydney watched the machinery, and she watched the dirt. She didn't say anything.
I held Jules the whole time, and she narrated the process. "The man is pouring dirt on Grandma," she said. "Now she can't play with us."
"No," I said. "She can't play with us."
After a second load of dirt was placed into the grave, Jules was more concerned. "They're covering her up. We need to get a shovel to get Grandma."
I cried until Jules wiped the tears off my cheeks as she said, "You're dripping all over your face, Momma."
The chaplin had told my parents that seeing the burial was important for little kids. If they walk away and the casket is still above ground they wonder what happens next. Will someone take their loved one? Will someone watch over them? Why are we leaving them there?
I didn't want my girls to wonder. I didn't want them to be afraid either. I wanted them to know that Grandma was safe. I can't speak for their experience, but they were okay when we walked away.
Watching the whole burial process was important for me. I couldn't have left my grandma until I knew she was safe. Even though I already know her soul is safe in Heaven, I still had to witness that difficult hour on Friday afternoon. For all that, though, it was awful watching the casket sink into the ground, awful watching the dirt pour in, awful to be there.
Although I wouldn't necessarily characterize Grandma as being silly, she could certainly make us laugh. She got a kick out of singing old jingles and teaching us phrases from her childhood. I remember sitting on the kitchen countertop, eating cookie dough batter from the bowl, watching her make chocolate chip cookies. As I sat there--soonly on my way to getting a sugar induced tummy ache--she'd sing, Buy me a package of Beeman's Pepsin chewing gum, please!
(Until I Googled it just now, I actually thought the words were Beam and Pepsin.)
She'd sing the Coca-Cola jingle. Sing hymns. Sing songs that sounded like nonsense until we were old enough to learn the real words.
Mares eat oats and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?
If something was outrageous, she'd say, Oh, brother on ice! or Oh, my achin' back! She was rarely sincerely irritated when she said these things unless she was referring to weeds, dogs, or deciduous trees. She had plenty of complaints about those things. But toward us? No. She'd say these funny little phrases to make us laugh.
My grandma taught my sister a nursery rhyme she had learned in grade school. I'm pretty sure I never heard it, but my sister heard it often enough to remember it. While Andrea was home this past week, she taught the rhyme to my girls.
And not to be outdone, here's Jules with a mostly accurate (and perhaps slightly more adorable) version: (40 seconds)
Even though my sister recites these poems and phrases pretty regularly, for some reason I don't. Some of the songs I don't even remember until I hear my sister sing them. However, there is one word (or rather, two words) that will be part of my vocabulary for as long as I live:
It's what Norwegian's say as a kind of exclamatory oopsy daisy except it's much more versatile. According to Wikipedia, it's used predominantly by people from Minnesota and North Dakota. Wouldn't you know it. My grandma was born in Minnesota and lived her childhood in North Dakota. Of course she'd say uff da.
I'll always say uff da, and I'm guessing my girls--who are only a quarter Norwegian--will also always say uff da. It's a fabulous little linguistic gift passed down from my Norwegian grandma born in Minnesota and raised in North Dakota.
From the day I was born my grandma was a huge part of my life. She lived next door, and unless one or the other of us was on vacation, I saw her almost every day for 18 years.
We'd get home from school, and she'd walk over and start fixing us an after-school snack.
We'd get home from school, and we'd find her in the kitchen fixing stew for dinner.
We'd get home from wherever we had been, and she would be there. And when she wasn't at our house, then we'd go over to her house. She'd put rollers in my hair and paint my fingernails. Just about every Saturday of my teen years, she and I went shopping because that's what we loved doing.
When we moved back to the Family Farm this past summer, again I got to see her almost every day. My daughters would often run over to my parents' house--where my grandma lived now--and visit with grandma. And get gum from her. When you're two, getting gum is the best there is, and grandma was definitely the best.
At the funeral last week, my sister told the story of how one of her college friends commented about us being raised by our grandparents. "Well, sort of," my sister had replied. "I have parents." The friend persisted: But weren't your grandparents the ones who raised you? No. Or rather, not exactly. Our parents raised us. And our grandparents were there to help raise us in a different kind of way. Not by disciplining us, but by showering us with endless amounts of attention and love.
Losing my grandma has been the hardest loss I've ever experienced. I feel displaced. Out of sorts. I burst into tears by looking at my clothes organized by color, just like my grandma's closet. I lose track of my thoughts and have taken to writing down ideas on scraps of paper so I don't forget. Even in this short bit of writing here I noticed (before editing it out) that I had written "they lived next door" multiple times, as if that's the piece of information I need to convey the most.
She lived next door.
She was like a parent to me.
And now she is gone, leaving a huge void in my life that I know will be filled up with wonderful memories, but aren't just yet. Right now it's just a void. Right now her bedroom is her room...without her in it.
I'm spending this month writing about my grandma because it's just something I have to do. Writing has always been my way of working through life, and I'm hoping that by writing through this loss I'll find my way again.
I love you and miss you, Grams. Always.
Creature Bug
I'm Stephanie, full-time mom and wife, part-time English professor and Photoshop addict. My amazing husband, three beautiful girls and I live on the Family Farm, a community that's been growing families for five generations.
