Little Bird

Honey's grandmother passed away early Monday morning.

They had some nudnik preacher doing the service and I was sorely disappointed in his eulogy. It even made me slightly angry with him while he stood up at the pulpit talking about things he knew nothing about. Things that were so incredibly important he glossed over. Things that didn't matter in the least, he repeated fervently. Things that did not even apply, he harped upon. Now, I am a firm believer that funeral services are not for those who have passed, but for those who have been left behind and some did find comfort in his words. I would never dream of begrudging anyone needed comfort. Still, there are other things I would have like to have heard. So for my own healing, I am going to say them myself.

The preacher said one thing that I think we can agree on. That she is not here. Not in this room or in the casket. She is delivered from her pain, so let us send her on with all the love in our hearts.

I believe that she is not here, but at her home. Heaven. But in this heaven, the fluffy clouds remain in the sky that is not always blue. And the angels are a talkative husband who picks up sticks, a blond dog sleeping under a chair, and little birds flitting to seed and to nest. They are the deer in the field and the unbelievably bright purple hydrangeas. The heaven she loved with its towering trees and grassy pastures. The home that lost so much after the Hurricane. They wept for loss at the sight of the Goliath trees ripped from the Earth and strewn about like playthings. She is in the memory of sitting on the back porch for nearly six weeks in the late Louisiana summer with much heat and sparse water until the electricity came back on. She was a survivor.

She is the happy memories in that place. The happy memories of the springtime, when her twelve foot tall azaleas that she "rescued" from gardens in many states throw out their raucous blossoms like decorating the Earth for a birthday party. Pink, white, magenta, orange. Beautiful lavender streaming wisteria climbing, climbing. She is there when the poplar trees put on their yellow blossoms. She is quietly sitting on the back porch again, this time with the box of old toys that her grandchildren played with and she had saved for her great-grandchildren. She is dark, rich coffee and sweet onions impossibly visited by humming birds. Her gentle willing energy will be there when we pick blueberries at her house in late June, just like we did last June when she showed us young folks up by picking twice as much in half the time. She is the stories of my husband as a child in all of his orneriness. She is old photographs and recipes written in pencil. Hers was the living memory. And while others may remember, that her worldview and family-view have escaped our reach is a terrible terrible loss.

Busy. Growing. Doing. Loving. The epitome of motherhood. She was what it is to nurture. She is an example I want to follow. It is stunning how such a pillar of quiet strength could be fit into such a tiny woman. And she was strong. Surviving a husband killed in Korea and singly raising two children nearly fifty years ago for about 15 years on her own before marrying again. They mixed his, and hers, and ours to make a recipe of one family. She told me the best times in her life were when all of her children were here and she was making a home for them. Planting. Harvesting. Cooking. Providing. She was so much more than these simple things or her simple life. She was plain and complex curls, light violet and many colored. She was comfort.

These children and their children's children are her legacy, along with sweet dogs and flitting birdies and all of the living things that she loved and cared for and that have surpassed her in lifespan only. This is the legacy. And it is proud. And it goes on.