DEEP SHIFT
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I am thinking about my generational context, my genetic code. I am focused, for some reason, on the female line. I never knew my mother's grandmother. She was gone before I arrived on the planet. But I knew my grandmother, Mary. At least, for a little while. Here's what I remember...
She loved me. She gave me teaspoons of honey when I had a cough (which was 'always' once I figured that out). We played croquet in the yard. She made clothes for my dolls. She let my sister and I slide down her carpeted stairs on our bottoms. She had a window seat with a flip-up lid and I hid in there. She cooked really yummy food. She loved her daughter who was my mother and I loved them both. She got very sick. She died when I was six and my mother was 31 (25 years younger than I am today). Unfathomable loss.
I later came to know that she once had another child, a boy, Stuart. He died when he was three, before my mother was born. She was a warrior. It's no wonder that her love felt fierce. I remember that too.
I remember my father taking my sister and I into the South Mountain Reservation, deep into the woods, into nature. He told us Nanny Mary had died. At that time we were on the verge of moving from one house to another and I remember asking my father how she would ever find us now. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I do remember feeling comforted by his words. I remember his assurance that she would always be able to find us - no matter where we were. He gave me the idea that now she was everywhere. Whether or not my father really believed that I don't know. I think he got it right. All these years later I can still feel her. She is me.
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| MARY |
We lost Mom in 2010 on May 5th. Perhaps I am so focused on these women because that date is rapidly approaching. Five years. Still hard to believe sometimes. Here is what I remember...
She loved me. She was beautiful inside and out. She was human and suffered through loss. For a long time I thought she was perfect and then, for a long time, I thought she was imperfect. She was a great Artist. She was a wife, twice. She was a daughter, and a mother, and a stepmother, and a grandmother. She was an amazing friend. She was funny and brilliant. She laughed a lot. She made yummy food. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was 39. She was sick and handled it with grace and fortitude. She battled her disease constantly, silently. She had a kidney transplant and was full of gratitude for the gift of a donor. She got progressively weak and frail but never complained. She never gave up on me when I behaved badly. She was a warrior. Her love felt fierce.
I never left her side in the hospital for five days and nights before she left us and because she had prepared me to face death, we had the talk of a lifetime. She let it be. She died with my sister and I by her side. I was 51. She died too soon. Unfathomable loss. But she is everywhere and I can still feel her. She is me.
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| JOAN / MOM |
Here's what I know. I am my mother and my grandmother. I am everyone who came before me and I am also just me. I am I.
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| Me |
I feel a deep shift. There are choices to make. No more lazy thoughts about how much time there is to do this thing or the other. I can't get away with that kind of thinking anymore. I can hear my grandmother...I can hear my mother.
They are urging me to be better, right now, simply because it's possible. I want that.
I am alive, I am awake and I am grateful-
for them and to them.
Nothing But Love.....Caro
©️ Caro Kalb-Marr
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