My Grandmother Stratton died when I was just six years old. She had been in declining health due to heart disease all my young life. I knew her as a comfortable homebody who liked to have things ‘just so.’ This seemed just fine to me at 4 or 5 since I was unable to do much for her, but it may have been quite a trial to other family members and her ‘help.’ Her help was a wonderful woman named Rigmor Nielsen who came from Denmark and became, as housekeeper, a part of the family. To me she was my third grandmother. Rigmor made running my grandmother’s house seem effortless. She loved us and put up with us and taught me more than I ever realized about the beauty of service. She had as much influence on the person I became as any other member of my family. She came to the family when my mother was in her teens and stayed to care for my grandfather through his declining years. Only after his death did she return to Denmark and to her brother who needed her. A lifetime of service graciously given.
My Grandmother Stratton loved card games and taught me to play solitaire and to keep the piles of cards neat and tidy. All this in preparation for learning to play bridge later, to her, a necessary social skill, one that I never learned. I wonder what she would think of the computerized version, no actual cards to handle, but the piles are certainly neat. I think she would find it somehow lacking.
In the spring of 1964 I was in first grade, my mother was pregnant with my sister, Beth, and my Grandmother was finally fading away. Combining the stresses of a young family and the latter half of her pregnancy with the imminent loss of her mother took an emotional toll on my mother. I can only begin to understand what she went through now that I have lost her myself. My Grandmother died in April. My sister was born in June. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the going out and coming in.
I remember a conversation I had with my mother sometime later that year. There were times when she wept openly and angrily in front of me mourning the loss of her mother. In my innocence as a young child I tried to comfort her by saying ‘it will be alright, you will forget.’ She was shocked and incredulous. She said she most certainly would never forget. I think I really meant that the pain would ease but the whole conversation with its complex load of emotion has stayed with me and is as clear as at that moment. My mother told me when I was older that the loss of her mother at the same time as a new child was coming into her life was one of the only times when she came close to questioning her faith in God. She described shaking her fists at God and demanding to know what right he had to take her mother away just when she was needed most. My mother and I are very different emotionally and our experience of faith is also quite different. It has taken the rest of my life to arrive at a place where I might begin to understand. In losing her this past July, I have lost one of the only two people who know all of my history and loved me throughout without question. When my father is gone I will never have that again in my life.
The loss is monumental. If I really wanted to, I could be very angry with God. Instead I find myself turning my anger toward myself for all the choices that harmed our relationship or stole time away from her. Time I would give anything to have back now. The very same regrets that all us imperfect humans have when faced with the permanence of loss.
Mom has been gone about 8 months as I write this. The seven-year-old me was right, the pain does ease most days, and comes flooding back on others. My mom was also right in that one can never forget. She is a part of me until the day of my own death. She is present in my DNA. Even if I am robbed of my memories she is with me.
The best part of memories is that once you have finished with punishing yourself for the inevitable mistakes and their consequences, you can spend all your time visiting the happiest of memories. They are safe, real and comforting. Death has not robbed me of my relationship with my mother and I have learned that fists are useless when talking to God.
