For a stretch of my childhood, my dad stayed with my grandma and grandpa.  “Lived” would be too strong a word, as he was a very transitory creature in those days.  On his court-mandated weekends, I would alternate between sleeping on the pull-out bed in their living room or in their spare bedroom.  It wasn’t until about 15 years later, as I made my last of multiple Christmas Day stops, a practice well-known to children with less-traditional family structures, that I realized my most tangible feelings of “home” are associated with my grandparents and that house.  

I can still recall the sound of the steady whirring of the ceiling fan above the guest bed and the measured ticking of the old clock on the mantel, the familiar scent of wild mint that had overrun a portion of the front yard, the bright citrus of the lemon tree out back, and the feeling of burying my face in the soft belly of their fluffy orange tabby, Oscar.  I once forgot to tell Oscar goodbye and begged my dad, through tear-filled eyes, to circle back.  He did.  (It’s a story that still elicits laughter at family gatherings.)  You see, even as a child, I understood impermanence.  I couldn’t risk losing the opportunity to tell my scruffy orange friend how important he was to me and how loved.  This is one those precious, innate qualities, diminished by the cynicism and angst that comes with age, I have spent years trying to reclaim for myself—the simple ability to proclaim love and appreciation at the moment it’s felt.  

My grandpa’s den is still full of a lifetime of tools and trinkets, collectibles and doomsday supplies.  Remember Y2K?  He’s still ready.  But my favorite detail has always been my grandma’s collection of wind chimes.  It runs the entire perimeter of their house.  Every other Saturday morning, as soon as my cartoons had ended, my dad lifted me onto his shoulders and we walked along the length of the house, pausing every few feet.  Jingling, tinkling, jangling, and clanging pierced the crisp morning air.  One by one, I would brush my hand against the glass, wood, shells and metal.  Softly.  With reverence.  

This was one of the ways I learned to be gentle, to take care, and to appreciate the fragility of things.  I learned to let go of assumptions.  That the appearance of a thing has nothing to do with the quality of its output, as some of the simplest chimes made some of the sweetest music.  Sometimes reality can bring a sound more beautiful than your expectations and sometimes those expectations are too high.  I noticed that the most delicate sometimes hung beside the most hardy and that distinction wasn’t always obvious by sight.  Rather it was in their songs and in the way they responded to touch.  I was often overcome by the diversity of their sounds and excited by it—a tiny tinkling before the bellowing sound of thick metal pipes leading into the hollow knocking of wood.  Sometimes we would wait until each had finished its song before moving onto the next to hear what melody and tone would greet our curious ears and sometimes we moved swiftly down the lines, touching as many as possible to hear what symphony they would make together.  We would often spend nearly an hour doing this, only stopping at my grandma’s call to breakfast and the smell of bacon floating from the open kitchen window, and for that entire time, I was rapt.  There was a magic in those moments.  A focus.  A bit of time and space transcended, hung in the air with the distant sounds of my grandpa clipping coupons from the paper and my grandma whisking eggs with a fork.  

It’s funny; I’ve never asked my grandma why she likes them.  Maybe she doesn’t.  Maybe she had one gifted to her and then another and then it became one of those things.  Thoughtful people assuming.  Maybe she loathes wind chimes.  Though knowing my grandmother, she would have long ago put an end to the nonsense, were that the case.  

And so, the windchimes are part of her legacy now.  They are forever linked in my mind.  She is the unexpected music I hear floating on the air after a strong gust of wind.  That sound, whatever version of it, always gently drifts my senses back to lazy Saturday mornings at Grandma ‘N’ Grandpa’s House, when the world was nothing but a pile of board games and a Tupperware container of homemade lemon bars.  A kitchen table, so comforting in its predictably.  With my grandpa, impossibly sensible and patient, and the satisfying sound of his steady coupon clipping, the giant metal-handled scissors, heavy and cold but somehow perfectly at home in his hand.  They don’t make scissors like that anymore.  Or grandpas, I assume.  And Grandma with her crossword every morning—a practice I picked up shortly after graduating college.  I needed some form of daily mental exercise.  But also, I think, I needed to feel, in some way, close to them and those weekend mornings at their kitchen table where everything was safe and orderly and the day could be anything I decided.  It’s the same way I feel when I hear the wind play the instruments we’ve hung for it.  This is the greatest gift she never meant to give.  And she has given me so much.  My dad now has a collection of wind chimes across the front of his home.  My aunts, too.  I, bound by the confines of my LA apartment, have one.  It’s hanging in my bathroom.  As a recent visitor joked, it doesn’t catch much wind in there.  But the sight of it always fills me up.  

My most recent visit revealed the chimes to be nothing like those of my childhood memories.  It has been over 20 years.  Things age and fade and break.  There’s that impermanence thing again.  I asked about my favorite chime from memory—cascading, white, bell-shaped pieces hanging in a delicate spiral.  My grandma didn’t remember it.  My grandpa, ever the realist, reminded me that these things aren’t built to last.

I know I don’t visit them often enough and I’m not sure why.  They’re still here.  But I find myself avoiding them.  I’m ashamed of that and that drives me further away.  They’re older now, more physically feeble, but my grandma is still the sharpest woman I know.  With wit and a delightful crassness yet to be rivaled by anyone I’ve met.  But every day, they’re a day further from the images I have in my head.  My spunky grandpa is a bit more forgetful than he used to be and he casually discusses his burial preferences.  Every holiday is regarded as potentially “the last with all of us together,” but that’s always true.  That’s what life is.  Temporary.  Unpredictable.

Still, I’m scared that next time will be the last time and that pressure is terrifying.  Crippling, even.  How do I pack 28 years of gratitude and reminiscing into an afternoon?  And also, how do I show them that the distance I have created was not about putting space between us, but rather about making space for myself?  And then flit back to LA neatly tucking away the guilt of feeling I’ve abandoned the people who have always loved me best?  I know it’s not that difficult.  I know I could just call.  It makes no sense.  This is what regrets are made of.———


It’s December, now.  I wrote those paragraphs back in April.  Back before my grandma was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, more than twenty years after she quit smoking.  Before it was decided she had only months to live.  Before her body fulfilled that promise.  Sometimes I write when I feel strongly about a thing.  Mostly I write to discover how I feel.  And, rarely does it end what it started as.  I was able to visit two more times before the third—the day I got the call that if I wanted to see her one last time, I should come right away.  

When she was alive, I constantly lived with the guilt of knowing how much she loved me and that my moments with her were always fewer and more scattered than those of the other grandkids.  There are very few photos of the two of us.  Squabbling parents and physical distance eliminated the possibility of casual pop-ins.  As a child, the holidays I spent with her were determined by the court; as an adult, by how effectively I managed to divide my time—that special torment that comes with being a child of divorce: the guilt of constantly disappointing loved ones.  Of never having enough time and never being in the right place.  Even on Thanksgiving, the week before she died, I felt that familiar guilt ooze out of me as, yet again, I explained my absence to her.  I’m sure she heard it, because the next thing she said was, “well, Honey, you can’t be everywhere at once.”  With one gracious sentence, she absolved me.  Of course.  It’s simple and obvious.  Of course, I can’t.  I have been painstakingly aware of that fact my whole life.  But hearing those words from her, uttered so simply and matter-of-fact, was exactly what I didn’t know I needed, and what I now believe to be her greatest gift to me.  I will always be grateful for that moment.  For her.  And for her effortless understanding.  When I got off the phone that night, I wept for nearly two hours.  A deep and inexplicable part of me was certain that would be our last conversation, even as I promised to visit the following week.  I could hear her exhaustion and pain through the phone speaker.  Her body was quitting in a way her spirit never would.  Only four days later, I received the call to come as soon as I could.

And by the time I got there, the fiercest woman I knew couldn’t speak in full sentences.  She was disoriented, in extreme pain, and unable to perform, on her own, even basic actions.  It was obvious she didn’t want to be seen that way, but there was no way around it.  And truthfully, it’s hard to know if she even knew I was there.  On her final night, I was awakened by the sound of her laboring to breathe.  As I sat beside her, the absurdity of the situation swirled in my head.  I had spent years afraid to visit.  The more guilt I felt about time spent away, the more time I spent away, hiding in shame.  An odd, fear-driven cycle.  I thought if I could just come to them with some great accomplishment, it would justify why I was away so much.  But that was an odd, deluded pressure I, and only I, had placed on myself, expertly getting in my own way.  Meanwhile, time passed, lives were lived, they aged, and I missed most of it because I was afraid.  Afraid to see disappointment in their eyes?  Afraid to see if my absence hurt them?  Afraid of watching my loved ones grow old and die?

As much as I claim pragmatism, I’ve always felt great discomfort with the end of things.  Not necessarily endings alone, but the unchangaeble quality of them.  The idea of finality.  I much prefer to leave things open. I’ve often left the last chapter of a book unread or the final episode of a TV series unwatched, allowing the characters to live on.  I don’t even decide an ending for them.  I take comfort in the idea that there isn’t one.  That their stories are still going.  That they have options.  (There’s probably a good 30 years worth of therapy sessions contained in those nine sentences.)  On a personal level, I suppose this reveals a lack of faith and trust in a greater picture.  It’s based in a desire for control and a need to feel able to affect an outcome however far down the road.  Sort of an “it’s not over ‘till it’s over” mentality.  But in death, it’s definitely over.  There is nothing more unchangeable than death.  No matter the circumstances, the outcome sticks.  It’s over.  Yet, there was a comfort in her passing, relief even, certainly not in the loss of her, but in the end of her pain.  A permanent end to her suffering.  An agreeable finality.  A positive impermanence?  Yes, the good will end, but so will the bad.  And all those big, dumb, idiots who have told me, in moments of grief, that this too, shall pass, make a little more sense.

I sat with her, while the others who had been there all along got some much needed rest.  Her hands were cold and swollen, clenched in fists at her side.  I held them anyway.  I felt a sense of comedic irony knowing that, were she awake, she would have only tolerated my grasp because she would have assumed I needed it, and I, only because I assumed the same about her.  We were similar that way.  But, seeing as she was asleep, perhaps I have to admit that it was for me, after all.  The room was inundated with the weird saccharinity of Lifetime Christmas movies from the TV in the background, interrupted only by the sound of her strained breathing.  There was a deeper sadness in the air than I had felt before.  Not the kind that quickly washes over you.  A passing storm that drenches for a bit, then leaves you alone to dry.  It was a sadness like a deep hole that’s somehow wider at the bottom.  A hole that keeps you in the quiet, slowly suffocating, with no idea how to get out.  I remember thinking “this is the end.”  And praying for it.  Praying she would find peace.  Until she did.

Before I left the house, I plucked a lemon from the tree.  I clutched it for much of my six hour ride home.  Occasionally inhaling deeply its familiar scent.  Upon my arrival in Los Angeles that night, I worked a five hour restaurant shift where my unknowing boss spotted a momentary chink in my armor and scolded me to smile.  As I pulled into my driveway that night, about sixteen hours after I watched my grandma exhale for the very last time, I glanced up through the pouring rain to see that my neighbors had put their Christmas tree up while I was gone.  Three stories up, its silhouette glowed in the window behind the sheer curtains.  Its warmth seemed so distant through the night rain and my furiously working windshield wipers.  Visible but entirely out of reach.  I sat in my metal box, under its glow, overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of emotion and sobbed as I realized I was no longer sure what it would mean to go home for Christmas.

When I think of her now, it’s not the image of her sick in bed.  I think of her on those Saturday mornings, sitting at the black and white kitchen table, working on her crossword and sipping coffee from the souvenir “Grandma” mug I picked out for her at Disneyland.  I think of the different sounds of her laughter—my favorite: the loud, singular “HA!”  I think of the soft way she cooed the word “hello” when she answered the phone and how comedically well it juxtaposed with her frank one-liners.  I think of the way I never sensed any predjudice in her.  She was too smart for it.  Her thoughts moved too quickly, her understanding too complex for such simple-mindedness.  I think of the masterful shade she threw at my grandpa in an essay she wrote in the early eighties for some of his “chauvinistic” tendencies.  And their love, that lasted for over 62 years.  The taste of her baking, her recipes, will be passed on.  The happy images, memories, and experiences—however many there were—they’re all mine.  I get to keep those.  And the old fears don’t matter.  Not in the end.  

In one of those visits before the last, I asked my grandma how the collection of wind chimes started.  Her reply was simply, “I’ve just always liked them.”  Not very poetic, but very Grandma.  She could inspire us all with something as simple as a whim.  And every year as the old wind chimes age and fade and break, new ones will be hung in her honor.

 

 

*****The night before she died, I found an essay my grandma wrote for an English class in 1983 when, before life interfered,  she attempted to get her Nursing degree.  There are those stories.  The stories people love.  The ones you’ve heard a hundred times.  I think, like many of us, I often take those stories for granted.  But what a gift the written word is—the ability to have those stories after a person is gone.  I hear her voice in every sentence of this essay.  And now, like the windchimes, it’s mine to listen to anytime I like.  My grandma will be telling me the story of her dog, Pokey, whenever I need to hear it, for the rest of my life.  These are her words:

“Pokey”

     I loved him so much.  For sixteen years, he was part of our lives.  We fed him, cleaned him, nursed him, and cursed him.  But mostly we loved him, and he loved us.
     Jim, that’s my husband, brought this little brown ball of fur home in his coat pocket, at four o’clock, one morning.  A peace offering.  Of course, Jim denies that was the reason, but how could I be mad at him when presented with this precious little loveable puppy?
     Needless to say, our kids were tickled pink when they discovered him in the morning.  They were three, four, and five years old at the time, and very into Captain Kangaroo.  The Captain used to tell a story on his TV show that our kids dearly loved, “The Pokey Little Puppy.”  So it was, our new furry addition became known as Pokey.
     That first night he was scared and missed his mother, a beautiful Irish Setter, so he snuggled down under the covers between Jim and me and slept like a baby.  Do you know what a mistake it is to take a puppy into your bed when he hasn’t grown into his feet yet?  He seemed to double in size every day that first year.  Before we knew it, he weighed eighty pounds and took up half the bed.  He slept flat on his back, dreamed all night about God knows what, and snored.  When we tried to kick him out of bed, his feelings would get hurt.  He just couldn’t understand why the other kids could get in bed with Mom and Dad, when they were scared, and he couldn’t.  You see, we never bothered to tell him he was a dog.  
     Pokey loved holidays and special occasions.  On Easter, he would hunt baskets and bunny treats in the back yard.  Birthday parties always meant lots of kids, fun, cake, and ice cream.  Thanksgiving, there was turkey and all the trimmings, not just leftovers, mind you, but his own special plate.  Then there was Christmas.  Santa always filled Pokey’s stocking that was hung on the mantel with the other kid’s.  Christmas morning he would patiently wait, while presents were unwrapped, now and then, sticking his nose in a box to see what someone was particularly excited about.  Then the stockings were taken down, emptied on the floor, and inventoried.  The year Santa left bicycles for the kids, they ran to get dressed to try out these wondrous machines and there was Pokey, left in total confusion.  He started barking and whining.  We came into the living room to find Pokey sitting by the fireplace, those big brown eyes saying, “Hey guys, this isn’t the way it’s done.”  The kids felt terrible.  Jim took the stockings down while the kids petted, soothed, kissed, and apologized.  Pokey was thrilled, Santa hadn’t forgotten his Hershey bar.
     I’m embarrassed to say, Pokey was a juvenile delinquent.  He was arrested, in Berkeley, before he was six months old, for running the streets, a habit we never seemed to break him of.  After his brush with the law, we kept him chained in the backyard during the day.  He was completely miserable.  He wanted so badly to play with the other kids.  We moved to Pleasant Hill when he was a year old and he loved the freedom of the huge, fenced backyard.  All the kids in the neighborhood would come over and play chase with him.  Our problems were over, our baby was happy.  
     Jim let him outside one morning while he was getting ready for work.  Pokey lifted his head and breathed in the crisp, clean air.  He stood riveted to the ground for all of a minute, then took off in a dead run, up, up, and away, clearing the six foot fence with a single bound.  He also watched Superman on Saturday mornings with the kids.  The fences were extended to eight feet, but if there was a female in heat, within ten miles, he was gone.  Our little boy had grown up.  For the next ten years, this was a constant source of debate.  I wanted to have him neutered.  My husband argued that we couldn’t take the poor dog’s only pleasure in life away.  Being somewhat chauvinistic, by nature, he reasoned if Pokey were a female, we’d have it done, because, “that’s different.”
     Jim’s attitude changed when he happened to be home one day and the animal control officer followed Pokey to the house.  They never caught him after his first trip to jail.  Pokey would spot their truck, run like hell, jump the fence, and pretend he’d been lying in the backyard all day.  Jim was working in the front yard when Pokey came running in with the officer hot on his heels.  Jim got a ticket, Pokey got a scolding, and I got the dog neutered.  The doctor, however, forgot to tell Pokey what the operation was for and the morning after surgery, he proceeded to jump the fence, find a friend, and split his stitches.  My husband loved it, typical man, you could see “that’s my boy” written all over his face.
     Last year we had Pokey put to sleep.  He always hated going to the vet, but he seemed to know this was his last trip.  He couldn’t walk anymore, so I carried him in and held him in my arms as the doctor administered his last shot.  The house seems larger, our hearts heavier, but the wonderful memories are still there.  I loved him so much.