Grace pm'd me wednesday telling me that i needed to call her asap. Since i don't have a phone at my desk and our network security keeps us from using any messenger service, we use sc pm's to communicate throughout the day. When I called, she told me that my grandmother had died last tuesday. Today was her funeral, and i was a pallbearer, as i had been for my grandfather four years ago.
The expression of love for this woman that was poured out from the 50 people who attended her funeral really impressed me. But I think the thing that touched me most, and this actually surprised me that I felt this way, was when my father got up and spoke of her. The love that he had for this woman, and the way he expressed it, was something that i have only seen in him three or four times before in my life. I sat there listening to him, and in some strange way, he made her life make sense to me. I really don't even know how else to explain it, it was such an odd sensation. I saw her entire life reflected in his. All of the people that now exist because she existed. All of the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, they owe their lives to that woman. All the friends that were there, would not have had that friend if she never lived. Their lives would have never been touched, never been graced, never been loved in that way if there had never been her. And I guess that showed me what life is really about. All of the people that exist, live and love, because another person exists, lives and loves. The purpose of life doesn't seem like so much of a mystery anymore.
And one more thing my grandmother did for me, that she didn't even know she did. You see, I took the little guy with me. I wanted him by my side as I went through this experience. I had been telling him for the last couple of days that he and I were going back to the town I was born. Last night, he said he was excited to be going back there. I saw one of those opportunities that rarely come in life, the opportunity to teach him about something important. So I spent a half hour telling him about her, about death, and what it means. I told him that what we were going to see was just her empty shell, her 'meat puppet'. That the person she really was, the person that thinks and feels, was no longer there, that person had gone on to the next existance. I told him it was like the house we used to live in. That we don't live in that house anymore, but we still live. And he understood, as much as a child can. So I want to thank my grandmother here and now, for providing me the opportunity to teach my son about something so meaningful, so profound, so important, as death.
The other thing that touched me was when he came up to me with tears in his eyes, sad because she was dead. He is such a special, loving soul. I wish they could have had more time together, because so was, and is, she.
Grandma, I love you. Good bye.
