One of My grandmother’s hundreds of dreadfully nagging sayings that she pounded through my “thick skull” for years went something like “you came into this world with nothing, and that’s exactly how you’re going to leave here.”
She was a super hero…my bat-shit crazy grandmother…
She was my super hero at least, along with a few dozen kids from the block who grew up on or around my socially, emotionally and economically train wrecked, beloved Chicago south side draped childhood.
Just in the center of my brilliantly ghetto, horseshoe shaped block…
stood the most enormously full and humming with life, weeping willow tree, I still may have ever seen.
Somehow, even then…this great dichotomy was my life. And while I find the contradiction of survival and beauty to be a peculiar couple. I am also of the belief that there are reconcilable in- betweens that corroborate with the universe to remind us…That it is always a great idea to keep searching, dreaming, loving and being…here…in this sometimes perfect, sometimes maddening now.
My grandmother never met a stranger who didn’t walk away as either a friend or impacted by the exchange they shared with her. She lived with a great passion I rarely find in the world these days.
To be discerned; she was equal parts sunshine, passion and grace…and equal parts… if you posed a threat to her or anyone she loved…she would be sure you were aware of the petite gun tucked away in one of her trendy purses, just next to her bible.
And if you were in need of anything…anything at all, she would be sure you were aware of the moist roll of cash she stashed in the fleshy arm-boob part of her bra, because she’d unroll her wad of dollars and hand them to you. And from her, I learned to be strong, passionate, somewhat wise, and brave.
She was a survivor
I believe there is both a wonderful beauty and an inconsolable grief that lives inside of us…survivors. And though we learn to be strong; our survival rarely allows or nurtures soft places for our weaknesses, failures, our dreams, imaginations; our under developed, embarrassing little underbelly’s to ever truly land. However…it is what we have in this life… the balance being to figure out how we embrace both.
The ultimate; Yes,and…
We survive.
But we also make room on those long dark nights and roads…to rest our tired minds and selves in the safety of truth, love and the hope that we are learning all of the collateral lessons life is offering us.
She left us all better than she found us… that was my grandmothers way. And she meant it. SJ set off on her final adventure dancing against the backdrop of a spectacular sunset from this life to the next last February. When her beautiful soul departed…she wore a lovely head wrap, a hospital gown and sparkly nail polish. I squoze her warm, fleshy hand from time to time in the hours before she took her last breath. I was unsure if her mind was still with us, though her body had broken and failed. She squoze my hand back and assured me that she was, and I was grateful that she knew I was there with her. That she knew, she wasn’t alone as she walked her last path. I watched as the machines read the steady decline of her vitals and her breathing became slower.
My super hero; the one who raised me and who I most belonged to in this world, took her last breath that day.
The earth stood still and changed forever, as did I.
Watching someone you love struggle for a breath, redefines my willingness to waste any. When she set off on her last adventure, she took with her exactly and only what she arrived with on the day she was born.
For SJ…and all those who go before us to raise the bar of how we live, dream, love and leave it better than we found it.