this isn’t the letter I meant to send this week or month.
I had one almost ready to go, all in a spiffy fun updated format, on the strawberry letters out in the world and other kinds of fun, peer behind the curtain details, it’ll come out sometime but instead, I lost a dear soul unexpectedly, well, almost.
If you’re new here, or if grief writing isn’t your thing, I encourage you to read OR listen to my last fun missive about my love of the post office. It’s dare I say plucky fun and at times more than just fun. That’s here.
But this is about a good old fashioned
Southern grandma who rocked & smocked
This writing is about a woman who showed up in my life when I most definitely needed a Grandma, and she became one. Her name was Pat.
Pat had this wonderful way about her, she’d walk in and sit down and just worm her way into your heart with her big smile, southern chattiness, and laugh.
Our relationship started at the last job I held before jumping off into the ocean to work once more solo-swimming for myself and I knew right away we would be buddies because we started talking immediately about sewing, and then particularly about smocking.
Oh I love a smocked thing, but not the ones you see out in the world, the ones you see in museums. Pat knew of my plans to smock a glorious adult piece of clothing - this plan has been in the making for at least 20 years, and Pat said with a can-do nod, we’ll make it happen. But it never happened because we just couldn’t stop talking.
When I became pregnant the 2nd time, with our child that made it earthside, she locked me with a stare and said, I’m going to come hold that baby.
Her partner said, “Oh, you’ve done it, Pat loves babies.”
And she did. Rain or shine, every week, she’d show up, lug a huge rocking chair across the community campus and rock and rock my crying sweaty baby until she calmed down and slept.
For hours Pat would rock that child and I would know peace.
I found myself nervous, would she show?
Pat wasn’t good at technology, she’d try to text with her home phone or email, but like clockwork, there she’d be. And no matter how vehement my daughter’s cries, Pat would just let her squall and she would calmly rock her.
Staring out at the trees, she was a peaceful river until our girl would give in and finally nod her chubby baby head & drool all over Grandma Pat.
She eventually brought along a camping fold up rocking chair to lug less, rock anywhere.
She told me the stories of her life, I could have listened to them for years, each one was fascinating and she had the gift of storytelling. She would say, you don’t really want to hear another one do you?
Yes. I wanted to hear them all.
I have experienced a long journey of attachment issues with my daughter, -different writing, different day, but it was Grandma Pat that started to crack the code for me. She shared a story about the deep fear gripping her to leave her three girls for even 10 minutes, how it paralyzed her and terrified her.
I said:
”Pat, I’m not scared to leave her, I’m scared I’ll forget her - I don’t feel attached to her, something is wrong.”
She grabbed my arm, looked me in the eye, finished her story. Stared at me deep till I sobbed. Same fear, same paralysis, manifesting differently.
We were both scared of the unfathomable loss.
The what ifs will make you incapable of turning loose or picking up - it’s all the same & Grandma Pat knew.
There were moments upon moments like those.
when the pounding starts
When I left the beautiful community I served to swim as hard as I’ve ever swum in the currents of the mighty ocean for my business all alone, I made the promise Pat and I would rock on each other’s porches. Well of course we would -there was time.
Do you feel the drums in your bones my friends?
Do you feel them beat when you know for reasons untold that there are clocks and they are running out of time?
I’ve had half finished letters to Pat for a year now. A magazine of my accomplishments, a packet of seeds to send. I’ve had best intentions, but mostly I’ve had the sounds of drums in my chest beating ever louder and the words over and over and over
You’re Running Out of Time.
I’ve turned to my spouse and voiced my fear. I’ve beat myself up.
I want to do it right, have the time - explain, and and and.
Get back the days on porches and the cackling and chatting and every moment,
but I’ve been so damn busy
and I’ve also been sick & weak in my bones with unexplained tiredness
and so many things and so many excuses and so many other life-isms that when the call finally came to tell me the dreaded thing the drums had been drumming ever louder had come to pass,
I ignored it, three times. Until the email was sent.
Yesterday I found out my beloved Pat was gone. Her way. On a river, tubing along with her community under the sun. A heart attack.
That big heart.
& those drums.
I’ve known so many different griefs.
This one cuts a deeper lesson.
I became prisoner to my stubborn shame, I kept thinking I could do it right - send off a perfectly worded letter with some beautiful wrapping and explanatory items and pretty ribbons that would make up for my absence.
And ashamed I hadn’t already done it, hadn’t already called, hadn’t already porch rocked, hadn’t already brought that baby -now- big girl by.
I was locked in my should haves and so I let those drums beat until they stopped.
But we know the cardinal rules of grandmas don’t we?
They don’t want our things, or our excuses. They just want us.
They just want us already.
No thing is going to be as good as our presence.
No thing will ever taste as good, look as good, feel as good, sound as good -as the sound of our voice in their ears.
People would say to me, Oh, it’s so great your daughter has another grandmother, and I’d look a bit bewildered.
I didn’t call her Grandma Pat for my kid.
Grandma Pat, that fierce, stubborn, gorgeous, loud laughing, golden hearted one-of-a-kind, that woman & grandma, -she was mine.
When the drums quiet
I want to share with you about drums and that sometimes they drum for us and we can’t heed them.
Sometimes they are the preparing us to empty out our hearts, leave our tears on the floor of the house of mourning. 1
Sometimes no matter your should haves or your heartbreak over your shame & your sorrow, your body and your mind can’t get to the porch of your loved ones in time.
And so you’ll finish your letter of thanksgiving without them.
You’ll rock on your porch alone with their memory.
You’ll notice a pink cloud on the night of the death of your Grandma Pat and say to your best buddy, hey, look at that Irene cloud in the sky, and not know that the cloud is there for another grandma, signaling her ascendance.
The drums don’t quiet immediately, at least, not for me.
Right now they drum:
I Told You I Told You
I Tried I Tried I Tried
And I’m answering:
I Know I Know I Know
It’s Ok It’s Ok It’s Ok
I Loved Her I Loved Her I Love Her
Maybe the drumming won’t fade. Maybe while we’re living, the drums beating the coming of our inevitable losses never really do.
And that’s our honor isn’t it? To be here to hear them and cut our finest flowers -those that are left in the hottest driest dusty earth of August.
Throw out even more forget me not seeds on our soil, say the names of our beloved ones, be the one who is left to tell the stories given to us by our grandmas and our kith gone on.
Beat the drum of our hearts and drop the tears of our vast love for everyone that has split us wide open with the generosity of their care and their gracious messy loving. Let’s beat it loud the best we can. Let’s do that for one another. Shall we?
Years ago my godsister, Susie, shared a link to the incredible chaplain Kate Braestrup, weird, the things you remember like who shared what on facecrack a million years ago -but I do probably because Susie and I know a thing or two about grief. Kate says:
“Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning for grief is just love squaring up to its oldest enemy and after all these mortal human years love is up to the challenge.”
If you haven’t listened to the entirety of Kate Braestrup’s House of Mourning - I recommend it times 10 (and if you’re like Grandma Pat -& need an explainer- that was a hyperlink to it - you can click those yellow words and go straight to it and listen to it, it was recorded on the moth in 2015 and it says everything else I’d want to say to you today about grief and just having it.)
So sorry for your loss Sarahbeth. Pat sounds like she was an amazing woman, and grandmother. Time is short here, and not to be taken for granted, like most of us do. Cherish those special memories of your time with her.
I love you. I’m so honored to be a part of your life. Thank you for your words and I’m so sorry for your loss.