A Mother's Mother

When I was a little girl things were so different. Even scissors were built sturdier. My grandmother had a pair that must have weighed 10 lbs, made out of wrought iron. I've been to many funerals, probably 20 in all--and each one of them were so different but were all about acceptance, accepting the death I would also one day die, even though as a child I didn't yet understand why the hands I touched were so cold and lifeless. And I can remember singing precious memories before I even knew what the past was--as a foreshadowing of a time when I would watch my mother fade away just like she mourned the slow death of her own. At one time I had been scared in the cellar where older people preserved secure tomorrows. But now when I sit down there, with rotting boxes and rusted preserves, the falling apart reminds me of how I should have held onto my childhood and asked my grandmother one more question before she went away. She was born into a strange world and died in a home that was not her own. I remember when the call came and all I could do was laugh with my older sister in childlike denial, secretly swearing life was still about eating whole bags of potato chips in one sitting. Even my parents were invincible back then and it was as if one loss was a drop in the bucket compared to all those still left living. But there is not one now that knows the difference between a weed and a flower like grandma did. She was the only woman I have known to this day, that effortlessly kept the whole family tree standing, just by leaning against it with her weight. I only came to know my grandmother past the time of any sign that she ever believed in the kind of love for which I'm still young enough to hope. She had lived way beyond the days and nights of deciding what she wanted to be when she grew up. Because she had already arrived and now lived every minute teaching me to keep walking even when the load would get too heavy to bear. Life seemed so much richer when all the layers were there and I was sandwiched somewhere between birth and the future. But now each little tear I've cried for her has formed crevices--baby wrinkles, signs of realized mortality that I earn just by living, just like her. Happy birthday mom! Please live to be a mother's mother's mother's mother. I don't ever want to lose you.