Looking back, looking forward

a little philosophizing

In what grade in public school did we learn how to set up a formal letter? Return address at the top left, name and address of the recipient below that, then the date, the greeting, body of the letter, closing, and signature. Everything left-aligned with a blank line space between the elements. Do you remember this?

I had forgotten about it until I received a letter today from D, an inmate in a South Carolina prison, who was writing to ask for a copy of the comic book Bible we send out free to inmates who request one.

D’s letter was perfectly laid out and his penmanship was lovely. He had quite an extensive vocabulary and his writing was impeccable. How does this person wind up in jail? I want to know his story.

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Last Sunday, instead of going to church, I got in the car and drove to Virginia Beach, three and a half hours. I’m not sure why except that I knew I could not face anyone without crying. I couldn’t even sit in the chair in my bedroom without crying. So I drove a long way to sit on a warm, sunny beach for one hour, then turned around and came back home. It was exactly what I needed.

While I was there, I was—of course—thinking about my mother. When I was a little girl we lived in a town about 20 minutes from the beach (until we moved to the beach town itself), but that didn’t keep us from going. Mommy and I loved the sun, the sand, the gulls calling, the salty air, the warm breeze. It was then, and is still today, the place I feel most at peace.

But even when we didn’t go to the ocean beach, my mother would take me to a small, quiet beach in nearby Manasquan where there were no waves. Maybe it was on the river somewhere? I was too little to pay attention to locations. She would bring a blanket and a picnic lunch with two cans of Tab, remember that? It was the first diet soda and it came in pink cans. (Marketing much?) Mommy would lie in the sun and read, and I would play in the calm, shallow water in my little sailor-looking bathing suit with the white pleated skirt. She always brought a paper cup for me to catch minnows in over where the grass grew tall at the edge of the water. I loved how calm it was. No crashing waves. No loud radios. Just warm sunshine, the smell of salty air, and my mother always nearby. It was childhood bliss and I loved when she took me there.

I’ve always needed the calm and quiet. Maybe Mommy preferred the quiet of that secluded spot over the noise and energy of the oceanfront beach too. Maybe I just thought we went there for my sake. That’s how she was with me—always knowing what was best and doing it. Maybe she knew I was a highly sensitive kid who was easily overstimulated and I just needed some peaceful sun and sand.

I wish I could remember where that place was. Probably it’s gone by now, another mass of condos at the Jersey Shore ruining my fond reverie. Memories are so fleeting. I wish I had been one of those lifelong journalers who wrote about the events of every day. I wouldn’t be grasping to put together my childhood now. 

And that is how it feels. With Daddy’s passing, and now Mommy gone, it feels like my memories are slipping away and I’m trying to hang on to them. Sometimes I just sit and try to remember more things from when I was little. Often I think I’m remembering something when really I’m remembering a picture I’ve seen of it, not the actual event, which I do not, in reality, remember.

When Ben lost his dad I remember him saying, “I feel like no one has my back” and I 100% get that now. I always have the feeling that I am looking behind me and there’s no one there. The night Mommy passed, we were sitting in her apartment waiting for the hospice nurse to arrive when my brother said, “Well, Karen, you’re the family matriarch now.” What on earth? This is certainly not a position I ever considered or wanted. I never even thought of my mother that way, but there is no denying that my mother’s generation is almost completely gone. I watched her parents’ generation fade away—my grandparents, great aunts and uncles—and now Mommy’s sister is the last of the generation before mine and that’s just hard to believe. There was a whole family tree back there—a huge, bushy oak with gobs of branches sticking every which way—and now there’s just one small limb left.

I know this is the way it is, how life goes, all that. But it suddenly feels so final, so empty, like the whole movie that was my life has ended and there are only a few straggly credits left to see. Everyone is leaving the theater. The path ahead is full of life and hope but when I look behind, it is disappearing into the vapor. Falling off the screen of my memory and I am desperate to remember everything to keep it from vanishing altogether.

I knew my parents were aging and that this was the inevitable end. None of it has really been a surprise. I was prepared for that. But I was not prepared for what I am actually feeling, and that might be the hardest part.

I knew I would miss them when they were gone. I knew I would often think of something I wanted to tell or ask one of them and then realize I would never do that again.

I did not know I would feel like all of my previous life was erased with them. It’s as if my foundation was a rug that’s been pulled out from under me. It sounds so philosophical and if there’s one thing I am not, it’s that. I’m the most practical person I know, and that’s what makes it all so weird.

I am not in despair. As Marilla Cuthbert so aptly said, “To despair is to turn your back on God.” I am full of thankfulness for all the time I had with Daddy last year and the last ten days I got to spend with my mother, even if she didn’t know I was there. I knew it, and that helps me immensely.

I am grateful for the family I was born into, even with all its imperfections. It was a magnificent one, chock full of wonderful people who together made me who I am. That they are mostly gone now is hard to fathom.

And then I think of the 13 children who call me Grammy and I am filled with a different kind of gratitude. I get to be the foundation for them. I get to be one of the many branches in their family tree. I get to make happy memories for them. I get to give them what I am so thankful for today. God is so kind to give me that privilege.