Grandma, Tell Me 'Bout

I loved that song - Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good ol' days!  I'm standing in my grandma's kitchen, a picture of her in her good ol' and very young days staring back at me.  I went into her office tonight to borrow a few envelopes from her.  It's hard to cross the threshold into her world - because that is what those three rooms were: her entire world in an office, a bathroom, and a bedroom.  I looked at the pictures on the wall and wondered why she had them, where they came from, who had given them to her, why they meant enough to have a place on the walls of her sanctuary.  I thumbed through a few books on her desk - some very old titles, some more contemporary ones - and cried a bit as I thumbed through her old Book of Mormon.  I don't remember seeing her read that one for quite a while now - the print was much smaller than her larger Book of Mormon that laid on her bed or sometimes on her walker's tray and was read daily, no matter the time of day or night.  I found a few books that I had never heard of before but that obviously had some significance for her:

- All is Well: A book published in 1909.  In the front it says it is the fourth volume in the Primers of Peace "Don't Fret" Series. 
- On Your Way: A book published by Deseret Book Company in 1964 and addresses what the front cover calls, "the practical problems of leaving home, planning the way ahead, study, work, and living with others."
- Voice of Warning: A book by Parley P. Pratt that was written to help people discern between the voices of the world and the ways of the Lord as the tides of the times caused moral and spiritual things to wash away like sand and the Lord needed His people to be rocks on the shore that would not wash away.

You know, I don't know why she had these books on her computer stand, right in front of the chair she sat in day after day to do her needlework and make dolls or doll dresses or write birthday cards to each of the sisters in her church women's group as their birthdays rolled around.  I do not know who gave her these books and why she kept them.  I don't know if they belonged to her mother and were passed down to her or if they were gifts from friends or things she bought to give to her children.  I don't know how often she read them or what she gleaned from them each time she did.  And now, finding them today, I realized that I never will.  That chair is now empty.  Those books are now simply part of the estate to be dispursed as the executors see fit.  And they may be seen as just old books, maybe viewed as valuable because they are so old or as silly and garbage because they are so worn.  Not on purpose because the executors are frivolous or materialistic, but just because that is the way things go sometimes.  And no matter what they or I might think when we read them or see them, we will never know what she saw, what she felt, why she kept them there.  Were they in a predominant place so they could be remembered and found easily?  Or were they really stashed behind the sewing machine and mostly forgotten dust collectors?  I don't know.

I spent the better part of six months here in my grandma's house last year.  Half the year.  That's a long time.  She loved my children -- she gave them so much love and laughter and joy.  I ran across a note in her weight journal that talked about us coming one time and the twins walking in the door and running over and crawling up on her lap with Madison and her saying, "Let's have a party!"  I could just hear her say that and hear her laughter as I read it.  I could hear a lot of things as I remembered that day.  And then she wrote that she fell as she walked back down the hall to her room.  And my mom called the neighbor lady who was loading something in her car out front to come over and help me lift Grandma off the floor.  She wrote that it was a "Piece of cake."  I can hear her saying that with laughter to lighten what might have been a more perilous and serious situation at her age.  And we set her on her bed and went about our day - I think we might have even gotten food at Corona Village that night and brought it to her.  One of her favorite places to eat.

During the time I was here last year, my mom often told me she wanted me to sit and get Grandma to tell me stories about her life growing up.  And I would love to say I did it.  But I didn't.  I didn't.  I was too busy.  And whenever I would go in and stand in her room and talk to her for a few minutes, my ears and eyes were always half in the hallway and half in Grandma's room.  I know, I had two little tornadoes in a candy store of opportunities to discover and climb and break and turn inside out this entire house!  But I wish I had been a little more respectful of the fact that my grandma was old and was not going to be around forever and the day would come when I would want with everything inside of me to preserve and recreate for my children and their children who this wonderful woman was that gave me such a rich heritage!  I wish I had been a little less caught up in the moment and a little more wise to the context of time in the context of eternity.  But I wasn't.

And now all I can do is wish for each of us a little more conscious use of time and the fact that there is a beginning and an end for all of us that we cannot foresee or control.  It may be that today is all we have.  It may be that we have thousands of todays ahead of us.  And though it would be incredibly stupid and unhealthy to obsess over the fact that life has a beginning AND an end that we cannot determine the timing of, it would do us good to keep it in mind evey now and then.

And the other thing I have determined to do is to write down the memories that come to me of Grandma.  Because there are so many things she cannot tell me about from her life.  But there are things from my life that mixed with her life that I can leave for my children.  And then they will understand their rich heritage and the legacy they must continue to leave for generations to come.