Ellie’s Great Grandma Pat
Ellie’s great grandma died last week and today was her funeral service. It’s interesting having a baby at big life events that you want to remember. It’s very easy to get pulled out of the emotion of the moment by a fidgeting and fussing baby. During the quiet reverent prayer Ellie started to scream. During the memories shared, she wanted to be on the cold, wet, muddy ground and nothing except that was going to satisfy her. I started to feel the emotion sweep over me during the first prayer and then she pulled me out of it and my focus became on making sure she was quiet and didn’t disrupt everyone else. The thought occurred to me during sometime over the last week that I don’t have any grandma’s left. My mom’s mom passed away many years ago and we never really had a relationship with her to begin with. My dad’s mom is the one who passed away last week. She was such a sweet woman. She was a product of the great depression. She always had tissues in her pocket. She had the most beautiful cursive hand writing. I remember going to her house as a kid and getting to pick out the mug I wanted my hot chocolate in. She taught me how to quilt and together we made 2 different quilts. I remember her emphasizing over and over again how sharp the rotary blade was and I had to be VERY CAREFUL while using it. I remember her poochy belly that she would tie her sweat pants over. She would always remind people to eat her cherry pie gently as she might have missed a pit or two. She used to feed chipmunks out of her hand. She was an avid quilter and made me a baby blanket quilt, a Christmas stocking and a wedding quilt.
Many memories were shared today at her service. She had dementia and didn’t remember any of us at the end but I will always remember how much she loved us.
Something happened during the service that made me really upset. As they were lowering her into the earth, my grandpa was crying and there were some family gathered around him telling him things that minimized his grief (like: She’s with God, there’s no tears in heaven, there’s no sadness or pain). The thing that struck me was when he said through his tears “But I can’t reach out in the middle of the night and hold her hand”. It’s so tempting to try to make people feel better when they are sad. It’s the easy thing to do. To offer a word of advice or “comfort” when in reality…there is no comfort. There is no highway through sadness. You can’t just cruise on through. The journey is slow and difficult and is one that must be done at one’s own pace. It is a disservice to try to rush someone on to happier thoughts. Let them be sad. Sit with them. Be still. Be Quiet. Be. Hold their hand. Let your tears fall together. But don’t you dare try to make them feel like their grief needs to be ignored or “gotten over faster”.
