Sometime on Friday morning I felt the turning of a page. For the first time in my fifty years of life, I no longer have any grandparents. Come January, I will be a grandparent for the fourth time in less than five years. This afternoon I scrolled through my phone looking at old photographs and settled on two that capture well over a hundred years of family history.
The first picture is a five generations picture from when my oldest son Reese was born. In the picture, I’m on the far right holding Reese, to my right is my daddy, to his right is his mother — my Memaw — and sitting in the chair in front was my great grandfather Wilson. The second picture is of four of those five, with a new one added — my grandson Ryker — and everyone shifting one place to the right. In this picture my Memaw is sitting in the chair, while my daddy occupies her position from the previous generational picture and I occupy the place of my daddy, while my son occupies my place. Tonight, we all shifted another place to the right as my daddy now sits in the seat of the eldest generation, and now I am one step closer to the chair in front. My Memaw has died and the page has turned.
I vividly remember the last time I saw each of my grandparents. I lost my first, Grandaddy Sam, when I was eight years old. Because my mother was the next to last of eleven children, by the time I came along, Grandaddy Sam already had seventeen grandchildren and he was an old man in his seventies — in hindsight, there is probably a correlation between having seventeen grandchildren and being an old man in his seventies. The summer before he died we took him on a family trip to Atlanta to watch his beloved Braves play in person. Watching pro baseball in person turns the oldest of men into eight year old boys, so we both had the time of our lives, and I’m glad we did because four months later he came to the end of his. He suffered a heart attack and was taken to St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville. Mama convinced the staff to let me poke my head through the ICU door and wave at him in his bed. We both smiled and waved and that was the last time I ever saw him. A couple of days later my parents showed up early to school to pick me up and as soon as I saw them in the door I turned to my friend and said, “My grandaddy is dead.” Somehow I just knew — mama’s and daddy’s didn’t just show up in the middle of the day for nothing. This was the first death I ever experienced.
It would be nearly two decades before I saw another of my grandparents for the last time. Unlike Grandaddy Sam, I was Grandaddy Richard’s first grandchild, and we shared a middle name — Allen. When he died he was younger than my other grandfather was when I was born. Grandaddy Richard had suffered a heart attack at around 64 years old, and developed emphysema soon after, which chained him to an oxygen tank. The day before Thanksgiving in the year 2000, I stopped by my office at the church building before we headed off to Tupelo for Thanksgiving with my in-laws. I don’t remember why he was there, but Grandaddy Richard was in the parking lot and we talked for a few minutes, wished each other Happy Thanksgiving, and then I drove away. The next time I would see him would be very early on Monday morning lying dead in the Hillside Hospital Emergency Room.
Five years would pass before I lost my next grandparent, Big Mama Hood. The first decade or so of my life I spent as much time with Big Mama as I did with anyone. I have written extensively about Big Mama in the past, so I will keep my remarks brief here, but my final years with her were some of the best because of the power of perspective. By now I was 30 years old with two children of my own and two grandparents no longer with me. I regularly went to her house for lunch just so I could spend time with her and talk to her one on one. I loved hearing her talk, how she talked, her vocabulary and gestures and her stories. Unlike the loss of my two previous grandparents, this one was not unexpected. Big Mama should have died half a dozen times, but the level of commitment to her care that my mama devoted extended her life by years. Still, when the end came, we saw it coming. Though it wasn’t my last time seeing her, one of my greatest memories came in the weeks leading up to her death. At this point we were all taking turns staying with her to make sure she had round the clock care. On this occasion it was my turn to stay with her. By this point she was spending most of her time in bed, so I just crawled into bed beside her and talked until I fell asleep. I remember waking up next to her and seeing her just watching me sleep. I know how much that day meant to me, and as a grandparent myself now, I think I have an idea of what it meant to her too. The last time I saw her was in her bed on the night she died. The house was full of our huge family and we took turns going in to be with her as she slowly slipped from this life. That was 21 years ago.
My last grandparent died this morning — Memaw is what I called her. I last saw Memaw on Monday of this week. Mama and I work from her home and she told me she was walking next door to check on Memaw. A few minutes later she called me and asked me to come help get her out of the floor because she had fallen. I went next door and helped get her out of the floor and into a chair. I told mama she needed to call an ambulance and have her taken to the hospital. While mama was in the back getting Memaw some clothes, we sat for a few minutes and talked. Just before the EMT’s arrived, she told me — in reference to the fact that I’d recently cut off my long hair — “I like your hair. It looks more like you.” That was our final conversation. For the first time in my life, I don’t have any grandparents anymore. I’m not yet sure how that makes me feel. At the moment it just seems like a statement of fact. A cold fact.
My relationship with my last grandparent was, at times, complicated in ways that aren’t really interesting enough to talk about, but deep nonetheless. If I’m being honest, there were three stages to our relationship. The middle stage was when I was her preacher and grandson, and so I spent a lot of time sitting with her and listening to her and seeking to counsel her in the way a pastor is supposed to do. It was during these years that I learned more about her than I did at any other time, and most of what I learned broke my heart and grieved me to the core.
She grew up and became an adult in an era when feelings and emotions were not as openly discussed and shared as they are now, and that can be difficult for people who are very feeling oriented. There is a longing to open your heart, share your feelings and connect with others but there is also a fear of rejection or judgment or that those feelings will be used against you or used to belittle you. For people who are very sensitive that can be terrifying and very painful. I’ll never know the who, the when, and the how, but I know she got hurt deeply for feeling openly and it changed her forever.
In later life, she developed a passion for family history and during those pastoral years I think I learned why that was so important to her. I think maybe it was because she was striving for connection, something I think she never stopped longing for, but had a hard time accepting with people in real time. It was safer to connect with people from the past who were long gone. During those years I tried to connect with her but mostly ended up feeling sad because I saw someone for whom connection was so important and was so wanted, but was seemingly unattainable or terrifying. That’s not to say she wasn’t loved — she was — but there is a difference in being loved and feeling loved, receiving love and accepting love.
Though I tried to help apply some medicine to those wounds, they were too deep, and I am not a great physician, but tonight I feel more joy than grief because I know she is finally in the care of the Great Physician. My confidence is that those barriers to love have been removed, those wounds are being dressed and healed, and in the presence of pure love — for God is love — she finally has the acceptance and connection that she has longed for her entire life.
I find much more comfort in remembering her from my first stage of life — the years when she would pick me up from kindergarten and have me a little glass of Sun-Drop in a Crystal Oatmeal Promotional Cup and a Little Debbie Fudge Round. Those little treats would remain a staple in my life until the doctor quoted scripture to me and said it was time to “put away childish things”. When we got to the farm on Chicken Creek we would sit in the floor and play with Match Box cars that she kept in a special case under the spare room bed, or we would build things with Legos, Lincoln Logs or building blocks. Perhaps my favorite thing of all was when we sat and read Random House books like Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears. It’s probably safe to say that my love of reading was developing during those formational years.
I’ve been thinking about those days a lot tonight, as I sit in my home on this same farm, down the driveway from that house, and across the driveway from my own grandson who will be going to his first day of school on Monday in that same school house. I don’t think I’ll be the one picking him up from school that day, but I do plan to bring him a snack and a drink and ask him if he wants to sit in the floor and play. He’s not real big on books just yet, so maybe I’ll just tell him a story about me and my Memaw, and together we will turn the page.
Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost. Timothy Keller
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