Forsythia.

Would there be someplace for the dying to go, just before they die? While they pause, waiting to let go?

Do you know you’re so close?

Are you listening, feeling younger hands touch you, hearing our voices say it’s all okay? Or are you waiting for Someone stronger to beckon.

I hope you’re someplace light now, as you wait, and I hope you’re looking on. Maybe it’s like sitting in a quiet room with slides of your life like an old movie reel, clicking on. Watching all the days you’ve lived, play out just as you lived them; the babies you’ve kissed, the walks you’ve taken, the summers you’ve spent in your garden. And grandpa, loving you so quietly like he did.  All the Sunday afternoons you spent, the loaves of bread you made, the letters you wrote and trips you took.  Your favorite songs, and all the trees you saw grow so tall. I hope you’re seeing all this, as you wait, re-living, almost, all the sweet parts of the life you lived so fully. Your life. Ninety-three years of it. I don’t quite know how to size it, to understand what it means to live that long. The things you’ve seen, the people you’ve said goodbye to.

I think we’re saying goodbye to you now.

Do you believe in heaven? I mean really believe that it’s there? Do you know how to be intangible? We were once, you know.  And there’s one last journey for you; a great divide to cross. I think you’ll remember soon that you somehow know the way. You've crossed it once before. Now you’re almost there again.  When you’re ready, it’s time.

All my life, I’ve thought of soul as being shiny matter, otherworldly and divine. But body is just as much. It has to be. And the two are so bound they almost cling to each other at the end. Only, it’s not really the end. It’s just the very surface of the very beginning. So much lies beyond.   

“Where soul meets body” and says goodbye. The place of that moment of parting from the companion that has been yours since the moment you were born; the house to your sweet, sweet soul.

It’s a marriage of sorts, really; your body and soul. A sealing. Yours from the very beginning, created to match. One goes first, while the other stays a while. Then the other stays, resting and cold, and the one goes on. Only, it can’t possibly be easy, saying goodbye. Parting never was.   

But there’s something of promise. Of being made whole. Reunited and perfect. With smooth skin, and deep brown eyes and a voice that doesn’t shake.
  
For now, you just be. Grandpa’s been waiting a while, and so many others before you. (You have so much of them in you.) And it goes on and on. One wide circle of souls and bodies and heaven and Arms.   

I’m seeing it now.

We can be together forever someday.      

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While you’re not quite here and not quite there, I hope you’re feeling love.

You are so loved.

We’re all here because of you.

Hearts of sweet.

It was sometime in the gauzy postpartum months of last year, when I can't remember certain whys or hows, or what we were even talking about, I do remember a certain sweet moment. Mr. Keller told me that when he was halfway across the universe in Thailand for two years, the person he missed most was his mom. The privilege and sweetness of being a mother to boys!

Last week, when Morgan was away and I had extra energy to linger longer in the rocking chair with Danny, I couldn't help but notice how much he was swooning over me. In a moment, it was so clear to me how special and sacred and different the relationship of mother and son truly is. Danny is so enamored with me, the one who holds, feeds, cleans him, plays with him, kisses his face and hands and his chubby little toes. He goes to sleep in my arms and wakes up calling for me. His tiny heart loves me before he even knows what love is. His first real relationship, the first he's experiencing softness and love.

I wanted to marry Mr. Keller not because he has wavy hair, warm hands or because he smells like a summer day in heaven. I fell in love with him because he is tender. In his honest heart, which he opens to very few, is pure devotion. I know it's because of his mother. Mothers shape hearts. I'm learning that more every day. I'm shaping two of my own. Right now they are both sweetly mine, but someday I'll send them on. And when that day comes, I know who I hope they'll be like.

Madre

{1996 or thereabouts}

Yellow and purple crocus bloom beneath bay windows in the front yard of the third house on the right on Sapphire. 83621. My mom planted those in the spring of 1991. We had just moved in. Twenty years later, they're still blooming, though someone else lives there now. Crocus and daffodils and tulips; reliable and giving. They come again, year after year.

When I think of my mom, I think of flowers. Sunday afternoons, dresses, summertime. I think of blue eyes. And green gardens and pretty fingers. I think of muted pink nail polish, good books and perms.

I think of ease and kindness. I think of giving. And smiles. And light. And fun. The cookie dough eating, craft making, late-night story reading kind of fun. Ask Morg, she may be the funnest person he knows. It will stay that way for a while, I'm quite sure.

Edna T.

{my Grandma Tilley keepsake box}

One summer, when we were camping, Grandma Tilley casually mentioned to Mr. Keller over the campfire, that the Mexicans had taken over the Burley park. "No whites are allowed anymore," she said.
We had been married for six months. I think it's safe to say that that has been filed away as one of the more funny moments to come from my side of the family. (Though, there have been a few.)

Grandma Tilley was always present, sort of in the background, with her usual quiet, steady self. Not emotional, or affectionate or dramatic, really. Just factly and simple and there. Until quite quickly, one winter five years ago, she wasn't anymore. April 1st, she would have been ninety-six.

I've been missing her chocolate cake lately, and the silk quilt on the bed in her spare room and the way her house smelled like linen. The bouncy balls in her kitchen drawer, and her closet full of toys and her glass music box vase with peach flowers that sat in the curio by her front door.

I think I've thought more about her since her death, than I ever did while she lived. I've thought about what it could have meant to be born in 1915, in a farmhouse in Hayburn, and how she had nine siblings, and was the oldest of twin girls. Or how she had five children of her own, and three marriages, surviving an abusive, alcoholic husband, and another husband dying in World War II. I've thought about all the years she was willing, as a great grandma, to be such a part of my grandma glenna's family, how we were really the only great grandchildren that had a relationship with her. She went everywhere we went, to the Oregon Coast a million times, camping, to Utah. She was so independent and adventurous, always along for the ride.

Every now and then, when it's really loud, and we're eating good food, and my aunts are talking a mile a minute, and grandma glenna's talking over us all about Dr. Oz or Miss Cleo, and the kids are playing and whining and fighting, and then Jackie breaks into random song, and then everyone joins her, and it's so loud, but no one is really listening, I realize there is one less in our group of crazy, and it's the quiet one.

I miss her most in the background. It's like pausing in a fluttering room and noticing something is gone, but not knowing exactly what until you sit down and realize your heart's aching a little, and you're missing something you forgot wasn't there. That's what it's like missing grandma. Sometimes, if I don't look, I think she's still there.

Really, maybe she is.

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Edna Tilley loved walking, soap operas, rocking in her chair, writing in her journal, giving tight sqeezes, attending Saturday night dances, waking up early, and getting her hair done.

I loved her old rotary phone, her low voice, her story telling, and her homemade rolls. I loved her.