Employee of the Month

Today would have been my grandmother’s 83rd birthday.

It is hard to believe that it has been a little over a year since she left us. I think about her every single day. She said that she and I were soul mates and I believed her. A couple of months ago I was really upset about something. I found myself driving from Syracuse to home (a little more than an hour) crying the entire way. It was a Sunday morning and a grey, raining day. At one point it occurred to me that this would be a time that I would normally call my grandmother. She wouldn’t always know how to fix my problems but she would always be able to find a way to make me feel better.

At that moment, the thought that I couldn’t call her was literally the worst thing in the world that I could think of. I heard myself saying out loud, “Grammy, I just need you hear with me today.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the clouds around my car parted and sunlight streamed through them. It was like the beams were surrounding my car and leading me home. I don’t care what you want to call it. To me, that was my grandmother answering my call. It was so overwhelming that I almost had to pull over. I asked her to come and she came.

It is a strange feeling knowing that a part of you is gone. There is an emptiness in my heart that I don’t think can ever be filled. But at least now I know that she is still really there when I need her. When I talk to her now, I feel like she can hear me and that she is guiding me in some way. I also take comfort in the knowledge that there was nothing left unsaid between the two of us. For more on that, read on. The following is the eulogy that I gave at her funeral.

My great grandma Musclow died when I was 15. At the funeral, my grandma delivered the eulogy. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. I remember sitting and listening and being in awe of her. I was so inspired by the strength that she showed in her delivery. But I know now, that I should not have been so surprised, because that is who my grandmother was. She was strength.

She showed strength in everything that she did whether is was battling cancer, taking care of my grandfather, or going on with life after my grandfather died. She was strength.

But perhaps the best display of her strength came from the way that she loved. She loved fiercely, She loved completely, and she loved without conditions.

She had this ability of finding something special in people. She also seemed to have a knack for finding this at a time when the person needed most to have it found. She would say things like, “You can tell that Jay Baker has a special soul. He is a true and good person.” And then she would decide that Jay should be a part of the family, and so Jay was a part of her family. The end. Now, in Jay’s case, it helped that his last name was already Baker, but I suspect it didn’t make that much of a difference. That is just what she did. She brought people into her heart.

Now a lot of people love. And a lot of people love fiercely, but my grandma was one of those people who never missed a chance to tell you what you meant to her. She wasn’t afraid to express her feelings.

I had the absolute honor of being the recipient of this love. My grandmother and I had a very special connection. On several occasions while in college, some unexpected expense would turn up. I might need to buy another book or some item for a project. One of these expenses turned up at a very bad time my sophomore year of college. I was walking to my mailbox worrying about how many hours I was going to need to work to come up with the money. When I got to my mailbox there was a letter from grandma with the exact amount of money in it that I needed. The note said, “I just had a feeling that you might need this.” I called her to tell her it was the exact amount that I needed and ask how she knew. I had only just found out I needed the money. She said, “I just woke up the other night and knew that I needed to send that to you. I didn’t know why, but I knew it needed to be done.” Things like this would happen to the two of us often. These strange little connections that always prompted her to say, “well clearly, our love was meant to be!”

In a lot of ways, she was one of my very best friends. She was the person that I called when I needed advice. Mostly because you knew that she would tell you what she thought and not just placate you and tell you what you wanted to hear. After my parents, she was the first person I called with good news. She was the person that I called when I was sad. She was the person that I called whenever I was feeling lost. She would pray with me and for me and help me find my way again.

She is the reason that I believe in God and she is the reason why my relationship with him is so strong and meaningful. She helped to start that relationship and she has nurtured it all along the way from sending me on the eumais walk, to standing up here with me and grandpa when I was baptized in my early 20s.

I know that any one of my cousins or brother could tell you similar stories about my grandma and how she loved them. While we all had different relationships with her, they were all equally special. She had this ability to make each of us feel special. I loved when you would walk into her house and she would say, “Is that my Heather?” or “Oh! My Kristen!” And I can still hear her calling grandpa “My Marky.”

Grandma had a decoration in her house that has a picture of each grandchild from when they were little. She said once that she wished she had one of us now that we are all older. Last Mother’s Day, my cousins, Mark and I worked together to make it for her. When she opened it, she acted as though we had given her the moon. Grandma knew how to love her grandchildren, and we all loved her right back.

A few days before she died I was sitting with her in her bedroom and I said to her, “Grandma, I feel like there are a million things that I need to say to you but at the same time, nothing needs to be said.” She took my hand and squeezed it and said, “You don’t need words, when you know each other’s heart.”

That is the biggest lesson I ever learned from grandma. I hope we can all remember this as we go through life. “You don’t need words, when you know each other’s heart.”

I love you Grammy. I will keep you in MY heart always.

…and just like that

all is well in my world again.

Good things that have happened since my last post less than 24 hours ago:

1. I had a great match meeting at work and I feel great knowing that I was there at the beginning of what is going to be a great relationship for a young boy who has bi-polar disorder.
2. When I got to Amy and Andrew’s house, I was greeted at the door by Sonya, who was wearing the princess dress that I bought her. She hugged me and started giggling about the silly things her brother and I had done the night before.
3. Andrew didn’t have to work last night so he got to hang out for us.
4. Even though they had already had dinner, Amy and Andrew both sat down at the table with me while I ate and we had a great and funny conversation.
5. All the Wednesday shows were new.
6. I got to sleep in this morning.
7. I got to work this afternoon and spent about a half an hour catching up with Laura, we were then joined by Sara and Sarah to discuss our exciting plans for tonight and I was reminded once again how lucky I am to work with these wonderful people. It also reminded me that some of the best people I know are from various work experiences which makes me pretty lucky. It is easy to go to work when you know that you are going to be seeing your friends!
8. I was told that I looked pretty today.
9. I have been getting a TON of work down today (despite the fact that I am typing this right now).
10. It hasn’t happened yet, but I am going out to dinner with Sara and Sarah and then we are meeting with Laura and Stacy to go to a new open mic night tonight. I know this is going to be great fun!

I guess the moral of the story is that you need the sad days to make the other days feel great! Nothing monumental has happened to stop me from being sad. What has happened though, is that my life has simply proceeded, and all and all, no matter how mundane some of it might seem, it is a pretty great life.

…

Every now and then I feel the familiar and unwelcomed sadness setting in for no reason at all. In my teen years and early twenties, this was a fairly regular occurrence, but now, these days are few and far between. That almost makes it worse somehow.

Maybe it is the fact that I am a little tired this week. Maybe it is because I haven’t really been home in about a week and won’t really get to be there again for another week. Maybe it is because an old friend’s grandfather died yesterday and there were a lot of similarities to my own grandfather’s death nearly 3 years ago. Maybe it is because I am stuck working late on a night usually reserved for fun at my amazing friend’s house.

Or maybe it is just because that is how life is sometimes. People get sad. It happens. The smart thing would be to focus on how this is not my norm anymore. I am a generally happy person who loves her family, friends and job. The smart thing would be to remember that I have a lot of fun stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks and that this feeling is most likely going to be fleeting. The smart thing would be to call a friend and tell them how I am feeling so that they can make me laugh or something instead of posting it here on a medium that nobody reads.

Instead, I think I will wallow in this feeling for awhile. Sometimes unshed tears are worse than the tears we actually shed.

Birches by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Every now and then I return to this poem.  It does something to me emotionally that I can quite describe.  I like to hang out in this poem when I am experiencing prolonged moments of melancholy.  It brings up a lot of feeling of nostalgia for me which can be dangerous at times.  I continue to be surprised by how few people are aware of this poem.  I am also quite sure that the few people who read my Tumblr page are already aware of it, but I still felt the need to post it today.  So, if you already knew about the poem, I hope you enjoyed rereading it.  If it is new to you, I hope you enjoyed a new discovery.

Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.