gratitude

My grandmother’s singing soothed and loved me through childhood, through the loss of her — and has helped me face every hard thing in life so far. When my beautiful friend faced her own death, I did the little I could, and leaned on the love, strength and singing of my angels.

When I was little, my grandmother held and snuggled me in her lap and rocked me as she sang this silly song about a mama fish and her baby fish swimming over a dam.

When I grew too big to sit on her lap, I watched as she rocked and sang to my younger cousins from her chair on the big front porch of her white bungalow house.

She did this with all 10 of her grandchildren. I was often at my grandparents’ house, and walked there after school most days. My mom and I lived nearby, and my aunt and uncle and cousins lived down the street.

I remember our post-war suburb outside Cleveland as a lovely place to be a child: Mature maple trees so big and lush their branches overlapped, making a green tunnel above Anthony Street. All the neighbors knew each other and as they walked by there was a constant-back-and-forth between the porch and the sidewalk of “hellos” and “how-about-this-weather?” and “how’s such-and-such doing?”

When the tough times come, I reach for these memories, as they are among my most cherished. I reach for the comfort of my grandmother’s love and strength, the sound of her singing.

Phoning Home

My first job out of journalism school was as a small town news reporter at a local newspaper on the Maine coast. Newsrooms — even in quaint coastal towns — tend to be chaotic, loud and crowded places.

Every day, from their corner of the newsroom the two sports guys delivered a lively variety show of silly jokes and songs that grew increasingly whacky and louder as our deadline approached. Dave and George covered, wrote and edited all the sports stories in at least two dozen towns and four school districts.

They sang that silly song about the baby fish that my grandmother sang to all of us. They butchered it, singing all the wrong words, and I could never remember all the right words.

So I would call my grandmother, ask her to sing it, write down the words and hand them over to Dave and George — who didn’t really care about the right words and continued to sing about the fishes with their words in their way, only louder.

The Message

On a hot Saturday afternoon in July, hearing my uncle say over the phone that she had died felt like a cannon had plunged a lead ball through my gut, leaving a hole that sucked all the air from me. I could not breathe. I doubled over.

Early the next morning, I flew back to Cleveland, anxious to reach my mom and the rest of my family, and tried hard to hold it together on that first flight.

But between flights, in the “privacy” of a bathroom stall in the Cincinnati airport, the sobs shook me. I could not stop weeping, leaned against the locked door and whispered to my grandmother, into the emptiness.

Are you OK? I just need to know you are OK.

She was no longer on the front porch, or in her chair in the living room, cooking dinner in the kitchen or at the other end of the telephone line. I didn’t know where she was now, and that was terrifying.

A moment later, she sang to me. I swear to you: That silly song in her voice was the only thing I could hear — and I had not thought of it in a long while until then.

Clear as a bell, her voice filled my head, singing that goofy little fishy song with all the right words I could never remember. She sang about the three little fishes and the mama fishy too, all swimming in a pool until the mama tells her babies to “SWIM!” said the mama. “Swim as fast as you can! And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”

An Extra Push

You may recall the chorus?

“Boom, boom, diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

Boom, boom diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

Boom, boom diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”

She would always give us an extra squeeze on the SHOO!

In that moment, I was certain she was singing to me from her new life beyond her death, telling me she was absolutely AOK and not to worry one bit.

Swim!

That whole next week, our family gathered and did the hardest things together. We hovered over my grandfather — knowing the arteries of his heart were so blocked it was a ticking time bomb — kneeled at our matriarch’s casket to pray, visited with extended family and friends, wrote a eulogy and carried her to a cradle above a deep hole in the ground.

All week that goofy song propelled me through one hard thing after another. It was, after all, about a mama urging her babies forward over a hurdle. If I was alone in the car driving to and from the funeral home, I sang that silly song as loud as I could.

“SWIM!” said the mama. “Swim as fast as you can!”

I felt her rocking me, remembered that sensation of being loved and cherished, let that comfort me and felt her sing and push me forward.

Our Angels — Seen & Unseen — Love us Through It

When my thoughts and worries buzz like hornets around my mind in the darkness, I hear my grandmother singing and I can feel her rocking me and her cool hand on my forehead. I can breathe deeply again. I can rest.

Especially over these last few weeks, my grandmother is singing for I have called for her and her comfort. She is one way I feel God’s unconditional love and presence. Her singing voice affirms my faith that there is something more, and something wonderful beyond this world.

I believe in angels. Those we can see in this life who are our family by both blood and choice, and those we can no longer see who have gone onto the life beyond, whatever that is. They are still with us, somehow, some way. When the hard times come, we can ask all our angels for help and strength and lean heavily upon them.

They get us through. We stand upon their shoulders and can do hard things — the absolutely hardest, thorniest, scariest and most painful things we must face in our lives — whatever they may be for each of us.

In these last several weeks, I have called in my angels, both seen and unseen, for myself and my friend Wilda, who faced one of the hardest things any of us ever will.

My Beautiful Friend

My beautiful friend knew she was dying.

She has been my mentor, inspiration and a badass role model.

She is a wife and mother, and a warrior. A fellow believer and sister champion of the importance of stitching and building community fabric by digging in the soil and planting flowers and vegetables. She fiercely protected our special gardens because of what they mean and what they give to our community.

She and her husband led a project to plant 111,000 daffodil bulbs that bloom all over this small central Pennsylvania town every spring. She helped start the Sept. 11 Memorial Garden in honor of a native son lost at the Pentagon.

She has been instrumental on nearly every public garden project in that town: a pollinator garden, a gorgeous garden of all edibles, the plantings downtown and in the park.

When we visited recently, I asked her to count the community garden projects she worked on.

Nine.

I wanted her to know this town would not be nearly so beautiful without her.

One of those gardens is especially near and dear to my heart. She fiercely protected it.

Every spring, second-graders plant lettuce, spinach and radishes in small plots of their very own within our community children’s garden. This April, the total over nine years topped 400.

Wilda didn’t do any of it by herself. She worked side by side with people, one task at a time and led by example. With grace and diplomacy in a way that was quiet, selfless and effective.

She is a warrior who cuts through the nonsense.

And she fought off cancer for 20 years. But not this time. 

Nothing would stop the tumors this time.

She fought the good fight, endured unimaginable pain, needles, tests, treatments, tubes.

The Hardest Thing

A little more than five weeks ago, my beautiful friend and her husband and doctors decided it was time to stop treatment. She has been at home in the constant care of her husband, with help from hospice.

Honored, I sat with Wilda soon after her decision. We talked about what’s next. Because we don’t really know what happens. That’s the whole point — the beautiful, excruciating mystery.

My faith makes it easier for me to face that. Yet, whatever people believe is intensely personal and private and they have every right to it.

Her husband and sons face life without her. Nothing can spare them this pain.

She had made some decisions about her funeral service. She was starting to draft her obituary. Maybe she would ask people to plant daffodils in town in her memory. She gave me a short list of things to do.

I was struck by her calm and dignity, as she sat in a wing chair in her bedroom, looking out the front window toward the bare maple in front of her house.

She said she didn’t really have much choice.

She hoped the medicine would let her just drift away. That was the plan.

Strength in the Silence

Weeks later, that did not happen. She was restless. She was in pain. It seemed as if she was between worlds — no longer really here with us and yet still alive.

I tried hard to say the right thing to them both. I pointed out the beauty of the maple outside her window, now covered in red buds.

I thought that maybe my job was to gently urge her to let go, to tell her she’d taken care of everything on her list, to remind her of all the incredible good she’d done in this world. Because she has.

So I did.

But who was I to say and to tell her the time had come? She had plenty more she wanted to do in this life, and she was entitled if she was furious that she would not get to do it.

I realized I don’t get to decide the timing just because it so hurts to see her pain.

When I left with the luxury of returning to my so-called normal life, I wished I had said something different. Or better yet, maybe nothing.

I wished I could cradle my friend and gently rock her until all the comfort and peace of my memories seeped into her bones.

But that too would be for me, not for her.

I shouted for her angels, and hoped they had already filled the room and were singing the music that sounds the sweetest to her, and in her own time and way would lead her to peace.

Gratefully, she was not alone. Her husband was with her round-the-clock, loving her and managing — and being pushed beyond exhaustion.

There are no right words. This business of dying is awful and ugly. The anguish of it filled the house.

The day after my visit, Wilda’s best friend since seventh grade arrived from Seattle.

We Will Remain What We Were to Each Other

I cannot imagine what that next week was like. I choose instead to focus on what must have been the brightest spots: the final time with her husband of nearly 50 years and her very best friend of even longer, and her bravest visitors.

Wilda died eight days after I last saw her, last Sunday morning.

On the day of her local celebration-of-life service, the daffodils were in full bloom and children laughed and danced like worms as they learned about beneficial bugs and played bug BINGO in our community children’s garden. Just a small part of her beautiful legacy.

At her service, a friend read a poem she had selected, Death Is Nothing At All (Death of the King of Terrors) by Henry Scott-Holland.

The truth of this lovely line struck me:

“…the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.”

In this life she was an angel, bringing soup to my door when I was under the weather, listening with endless patience and kindness to my troubles, opening her kitchen and home to me for comfort in my hardest times.

And now, I believe that if it is at all possible, she will find a way to soothe and comfort her sons, and husband and family as they go on without her. I believe her soul is like that of my grandmother’s, an unseen angel, and that love lasts beyond death.

Nudged by the Love of Unseen Wings

Our angels in the life beyond death are not fixers. They can’t spare us the pain. Remembering the ones who have crossed is not the same as having them here with us. No way.

Yet, they can give us a little reminder of love and faith, a little nudge to dig deeper and find the strength to get through.

To help ourselves. To go on. To swim forward over the dam, whatever it is.

To take the next best step — toward life.