Bridges

My Grandpa would have been 97 years old last week, but he passed away two years ago this upcoming January.  My grandma passed away five years ago.

My grandma was the first person I was ever actually really close to who passed away.  My grandpa was the second.

But I remember in those days leading up to my grandma’s death just how scared I was.  I didn’t know how it would feel.  That scared me.  But even more so, the future scared me.  What happens when people we love die?  What if we forget?  What if their voices begin to fade and the pictures we have of them in our minds get blurry?  What if the love I had for them that was so intense just faded into the background of my life and they were just forever in my past?  And more than anything, I feared that I would never experience intense joy ever again because there would always be someone missing from every important event in my life.

These were the questions that littered my mind in May of 2009.  I knew they both had met my eldest daughter, but I knew then that Grandma would never meet any of my future children.  And when January of 2013 came, I found myself filled with gratitude that my grandpa had a chance to meet Goosie, but fairly quickly it became apparent that his time on Earth would come just shy (10 days shy it turned out) of intersecting with Mae’s time here.

Those thoughts terrified me back then.  I desperately wanted them to know my daughters.  I wanted Goosie to meet the woman from whom she got her name.  I wanted to see the love and pride in my grandparent’s eyes.  I wanted to see my grandpa’s eyes twinkle when he saw them the same way he did when he saw me and my siblings and my cousins.

That used to make me really sad.  But these days it doesn’t.  At all.

Today Magoo and her scout troop sang patriotic songs for people in a local nursing home.  Honestly, I was a little bit scared to go.  Nursing homes scare me the way hospitals scare some other people.  I always find myself trying to become as invisible as possible as I pray that no one notices me and no one speaks to me.  I was going to have TJ take her, but Magoo likes when I do scout things with her, so I gathered up my courage and walked in.

So there I was, standing there in the back of the room, feeling incredibly self-conscious, feeling incredibly self-centered, trying to somehow cloak myself in invisibility when suddenly they started singing “America the Beautiful,” and my heart stopped.  I had to remind myself to breathe, and quickly I had to find a way to run into the bathroom because I could not stop the tears from flowing.  And these weren’t little, ladylike subdued trickles – these were full-blown, in danger of sobbing tears.

Because as I sat there watching them and listening to them, I saw Magoo, but I didn’t see her as my daughter.  I saw her as his great granddaughter.  And I saw the look of pride in his eyes even though he wasn’t there.  I flashed back to stories about his time in the service.  (The Navy — and never get that wrong!)  And more than anything, I was transported back to all those times in church growing up when the choir would sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and I would hear my grandfather’s voice belting it out above all the other voices around.

And I realized, yet again, that death doesn’t mean one ceases to exist, and the more I pay attention since my grandparent’s passing, the more I believe that it doesn’t even mean the departed completely cease to exist in this plane.  They don’t live here.  They don’t reside outside of the Heavens, but I do very much believe that they continue to live in the hearts of their loved ones.  They watch us.  They touch us.  We absolutely cannot get to them, and yet they aren’t really ever not here.

Sometimes my mind gets in the way of my faith.  I overthink things.  I find myself unable to just trust in God and in all of the promises we are given.  And I think I have it backwards.  I think faith in God is supposed to allow us to have hope for our deceased loves ones.  But for me sometimes it’s flip flopped.  It’s in feeling them and remembering them and feeling touched by them that I am able to believe in God and in the promises that await us after this life.

I don’t know if this is good or bad.  After all, my faith in God is probably supposed to be stronger than anything else.  But maybe it’s God who is making these bridges available, who is allowing me to feel that which has passed so that I can lead my children into a life of belief and faith and trust.

I don’t really know.  I don’t really know much of anything except that these bridges that become open to me at times give me faith that life is not finite any more than love is.

We cannot take a single possession with us when we die.  Everything on Earth that we manage to create stays here; it doesn’t come with us.  Except the love.  That is a part of us and a part of anyone we share it with.  It’s the eternal and the forever and probably the only real thing worth cultivating.