Life and Death and Other Small Things
Existential crisis in 3...2...1...
My grandmother died at the end of September. She was a complicated woman with a hard life made more so by chronic pain and the fear and anxiety that tormented her for years.
Her life was very small and only got smaller as she removed herself from the outside world, only leaving the house for doctors’ appointments. As a family, we were not perfect in our relationships with her, but I can say that we loved her very much and did our best to make sure she felt loved and supported. I don’t think she accepted that at times, but I know that in her own way, she loved us very, very much.
For years, I tortured myself trying to figure out how I could fix things. I hated the way we all got along, and it became my mission to mediate the cracked relationships we had with her. It was a fool’s errand because it was not all mine to fix. In the last months of her life, I found myself seeing her in a different light. Not because she had changed, but because I had. As we planned her funeral, we went through gobs of photographs that she had put away. This is my favorite picture that we found.
This is who I believe Grandma was. Her true self was laughing and joyful; the fear she sometimes embraced was an outside influence, masking who she was in her heart. But when that glimmer of herself came through…she was truly wonderful. My heart aches for the depth of that loss.
No one knows exactly how she died. There was no autopsy because of her age and medical history. The medical examiner listed her death as natural causes. I spent the first week or so trying to put together a timeline, what happened and when. I needed to understand it, to fix it, to make sense of it.
But death doesn’t have to make sense. God is sovereign and does what He wants, taking and giving as He sees fit. That is both a comfort and a frustration to me, if I am being honest. I grieved so hard over the idea that she was alone when she died and that we didn’t get to see her after she was gone. The day after was a Sunday. I thought about staying home from church to cry, but I figured I could cry at church and at least I might leave the service feeling encouraged. So we went. And I bawled like a baby the entire service. The worship songs were all about being free from the slavery of fear and anxiety, and they sang about everything that Grandma is now. Free. Whole.
While they sang, I closed my eyes. With a bird’s eye view I saw Grandma in her room, alone. She was laying down, and then the room filled with a blindingly bright light.
That was it.
It seemed like a simple thing to see, but I felt so much peace after that. The darkness that she fought against for so long was gone and will never be back to torture her again.
Her life and death were small because everyone’s existence is. Even if we are surrounded by people every second of our lives, we are still on a singular trek into eternity. Death is normal, common, and devastatingly mundane.
Such is death. And such is life. Everything we experience is being experienced by someone else simultaneously; there’s nothing new, unique, or special in this world.
And yet, some things that are small and common are so singularly beautiful that it breaks your heart in a new way. After two losses, my sister announced her third pregnancy this week. Thankfully, Katie and my niece or nephew are healthy and doing well. She is twelve weeks pregnant, and although billions of women have been pregnant with multitudes of children over countless millennia, somehow there has never been a baby like this one. What a beautiful and ordinary miracle.
Birth and death are not separate events, really. I’m 36 years old, yet that tiny baby is closer to heaven than I am. Our souls are eternal, so it makes sense that we always have been and always will be. We are all old souls. As far as I can tell, birth is just leaving home, and death is us going back to where we belong.
Welcome home, Grandma.
LISTENING/READING/WATCHING/WRITING
LISTENING:
I’ve been listening to That's the Story I'll Tell on repeat for days. When you are sad and struggling, it helps to hear something that reminds you of God’s grace and goodness. This song will do it. Plus, Naomi Raine can SING.
I know audiobooks count as reading, but since I’ve been listening to it, I’ll include it here. Curses and Other Buried Things gives southern gothic, swamp mama kind of vibes and I am here for it. Normally, I don’t do Audible because I am cheap and just use Libby from the library, but my friend and I are listening to it together and are sending texts back and forth about it. We both are doing Audible’s free trial month to be able to listen to it! It’s been a roller coaster ride, but I’ve really enjoyed it. Just the synopsis is amazing. Check it out:
Blood holds all kinds of curses.
Seven generations of women in Susana Prather’s family have been lost to the Georgia swamp behind her house. The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she awakens soaked with water, with no memory of sleepwalking. No matter how she tries to stop it, she’s pulled from her safe bed night after night, haunted by her own family history and legacy. Now, the truth feels unavoidable: it’s only a matter of time before she loses her mind and the swamp becomes her grave.
Unless she can figure out how to break the curse.
When she isn’t sleepwalking, she’s dreaming of her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Suzanna Yawn, who set the curse in motion in 1855. Her ancestor’s life bears such similarity to her own that it might hold the key she seeks. Or it might only foretell tragedy.
As Susana seeks solutions in the past and the present, family members hold secrets tighter to their chests, friends grow distant, and old flames threaten to sputter and die. But Susana has something no one else has been able to seize: the unflagging belief that all curses can be broken and that love can help a new future begin.
Based on her own family history, award-winning novelist Caroline George’s latest novel is a staggeringly beautiful work of hope.
READING:
Each night, I’ve been reading my dear friend Kim Patton’s book Nothing Wasted. It is part memoir, part devotional and I could not be more impressed by both it and Kim as a person. The book chronicles her life as she and her husband navigate ministry, an almost PhD, infertility, adoption, church hurt, and so much more. I texted her just the other day telling her I felt like I was reading her journal and I have loved every second of it. (Admittedly, I am a very nosy person, so memoir is fascinating to me.) Check out the blurb:
Difficult seasons catch us off guard and make us feel like life won’t ever make sense again.
On our worst days, it’s hard to believe that God will guide us through the mess. Even on our good days, when we feel we have done all the right things, we may wonder:
Why am I working this job?
Am I making a difference?
How do I know the way to go?
Why can’t I seem to be content?
In Nothing Wasted, we see how we mature in time. Like fog dissipating, we recognize how God is gently leading us through each season of our lives. We may be struggling, but we are moving forward.
Our faith is not unseen.
Our moments are not wasted.
All the pain that comes in these seasons does lead to a full, rich life, growing in relationship with God and with others.
If you’d like to read it and be encouraged, you can find it here.
WATCHING:
In October, I went with my beach babes for our yearly trip to someplace warm and sunny. Since it was prime spooky season, I forced them to watch Ernest Scared Stupid. They were less than impressed, but I am not friends with them for their taste in movies, so I will give them a pass. As far as I am concerned it knocks all other cheesy Halloween movies out of the water all while Jim Varney gives us a masterclass in acting. Plus, Eartha Kitt plays Old Lady Hackmore, and frankly I identify with her character more and more as the years go by.
WRITING:
As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of upheaval this past month and not so much time for writing. Grandma died, I went to the cabin, threw a harvest party, went to the beach, and then panic cleaned my house for a week straight because we hadn’t been able to focus on anything for more than two seconds at a time since September. All while still trying to educate my children and eat enough fiber. (Excuses, excuses, right?) All that being said, I have loosely committed to a modified version of NANOWRIMO this month and I am hoping to finish The River Woman Project! To “win” at NANOWRIMO, you have to write 50k words in the month of November. I’m unsure why they started this in November during one of the busiest times of the year, but I am going to try and use it to finish my novel, so I can abandon it in December and come back in January and see what’s worth keeping.
My original finish line goal for my blackout poem project was November. Didn’t happen. I’ve decided to take my time and when it gets done, it will be done. I am learning to live with loose hands these days.
Thanks for the patience and the prayers, y’all. I’ve felt every one of them. Give your grandma a kiss for me.
Love, Tristan