Sisters of Mercy

I don’t know why but this sums up everything that needs to be said at the moment. I don’t know what the video has to do with any of it, but honestly, I’m not entirely sure how the song fits, but somehow it just does — maybe it’s more in what he says through the music rather than the exact lyrics themselves.

My grandfather died today. It wasn’t unexpected. We knew it was coming. I can’t think of it except in terms of birth — we knew it was coming, “labor” started last night when they took him off all his meds except the ones explicitly for comfort. I got a call about 7:15 this morning from my aunt saying he had only a few hours left. He fought it until about 5:15 pm, then stopped breathing & was birthed into whatever comes next. Most of my processing is over. I don’t think he recognized me at the memorial for my Gramma this past spring, but it’s still a passing of someone I knew my entire life & that’s inherently sad to me. He was 97. He graduated from college when he was 16 (yes, you read that right), and became a teacher in a one room school house. I have two books from his school library that pre-date him, one being a history book from the late 1800s. Quite a shift in perspective & history since then. Quite a shift since my grampa was born too. He & his brother came across from Missouri during the Depression. I think he came out first & his brother followed.

My gramma’s first husband, and my blood grampa, who died while my mom was in high school stopped the bus to nursing school and pulled her off it to go get married. My gramma’s second husband, my grampa who died today was the only grampa I met & he was grampa to me. He was the principal of my mom’s high school. After her first husband died, she started working at the school & my uncle being a bit of one of *those* kids, my gramma had been to many meetings with the principal prior to working there. Eventually, being the charmer he was, my gramma & he started dating. My mom & her sister used to wait for them to get home from a date then used the signal that gramma always used on them to let them know it was time to come in after they’d sat in the car too long — they’d start flashing the front porch lights at them.

Eventually they got married, a few years after my parents got married. Grampa was always a joker, never missing a chance to get my mom’s thumb stuck in the butter when she passed it to him, gently teasing the kids, talking at length about traveling around the world. In later years I learned some things that I didn’t like & didn’t agree with but… I’d rather know about these things than not. Isn’t that part of growing up? Learning that your heroes are human?

And so, it’s over. My parents are now The Grandparents. I am the age I remember my parents being when I was little. M2 stands belly button high & when neither M1 or I are wearing shoes, she reaches my upper lip.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.