Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Persistence of Memory


In recent years, I've found myself thinking of my grandmother more and more at this particular time of year. I suppose it is common to think of your lost loved ones the most during the holiday season, and perhaps that's part of it. But for me the association goes deeper. My grandmother's passing took place right around the time we were celebrating our most beloved holidays.

The last time I saw her, spoke to her, told her I loved her (thank God) was Thanksgiving of 2007. We were at my grandmother's house, and the feast was over. My family -- mother, aunts, uncles and cousins -- were all lying about the living and dining rooms happily drowsing and digesting. My grandmother was puttering about in her own room in the back of the house, having already completed her yearly post-Thanksgiving-engorgement nap. We were taking turns heading back to her room to each have our private chat with her. There were so many of us there who loved her, who loved being near her, and I guess we all knew that our time with her couldn't last much longer.

I remember I went back to speak with Maw-Maw (as we call her) after my cousin Stephanie had just returned from a long, satisfying chat with her. I found her in the middle of hanging a new bookshelf, a necessary addition to support her library-like collection. She asked me to help her, and I gladly agreed. I wish I remembered what we said. It must have been a conversation of inconsequential things, the kinds of matters that slip just as easily out of our minds as they do into them. What I do remember is the feelings I had as I spoke to her -- regret that I didn't speak to her more often and a dull sense that this conversation might rank among the last that I ever had with her. Of course, I hadn't an inkling that it would be the very last.

I must have seen her, if only briefly, at least one more time before I headed back up to my college town at the end of Thanksgiving Break. But all I can call back to my mind is those twenty minutes I spent in her cluttered little bedroom -- full of the paraphernalia of a nearly eighty-year life -- leveling a small bookshelf and chatting of nothing much at all.

A couple of weeks later, in the first week of December, she suffered a major heart attack. It put her into a coma that she never really woke up from. My memories of Christmas 2007 are vivid with hospital room visits; my mother so, so lovingly stroking her mother's still, veiny hand; old friends gathering to laugh and cry and remember the wonderful times; and waiting. All of us waiting for the inevitable end.

She passed away January 7, 2008, just after the turning of the new year.

I think of her often now. The pain of her passing seems as fresh as ever. Growing up, she was more like a second mother to me than a grandmother. My mom, raising two daughters on her own while holding down a full-time job as a teacher, relied upon her heavily to look after my sister and me when she couldn't be around. It was my grandmother who, when I was in elementary school, saw to it that I ate breakfast, got dressed and got to school on time. On days when I forgot my coat, lunch, pet rock or homework, it was my grandmother who got the phone call from the school office and, whatever she was doing, dropped it and rushed up to school to bring me what I needed. It was my grandmother's house where I spent my after school afternoons, waiting for my mom to finish work and come to take me home. I played there, watched TV there, did my homework there, made friends with the neighborhood kids, explored the attic, made messes, destroyed a few irreplaceable and precious family heirlooms... On days when I was sick and had to stay home from school, it was my grandmother's house that held my sick bed, and it was my Maw Maw who took me to the doctor, got my medicine from the pharmacy, nursed and coddled and scolded me back to health.

There is no moment of my childhood, from my earliest memories up until the time of her death when I was 22 years old, in which my grandmother did not figure strongly. Looking back, I realize now that her passing for me was the passing of an era. In many ways, I mark that moment as the end of my childhood. I may have been well into my twenties by then, living away from home and with a bachelor's degree under my belt, but up until that moment I was still living in a world where at any time I needed her, my Maw Maw was there to help me in any way she could. Her passing was my first experience of losing that kind of support, that kind of shelter from all that life demands of us. I suddenly felt as I never had before my own exposure to responsibility and the burden of caring for myself by myself. Perhaps this is part of why her loss still echoes so strongly in these chambers of my adult life.

My quilt, made by Maw Maw


Many things call her back to me now -- quilts, old songs, blue station wagons, the neon green bathing suit she sewed for me. Especially, I look for her in myself. In the mirror, I study my jawline and think how its strong, square shape mirrors hers. When I smile, I think that the shape of my smile is very much like hers was. Tonight, I spoke a sentence out loud to myself and my voice was an echo of hers, when she used to sing to me, "I love you. I love you. Can't help it if I love you."

I used to read in books or hear in movies or TV shows the idea that people we love are never truly gone, that they live on in our memories, in our hearts and minds. I always thought this was merely a reference to our memories' ability to call back cherished moments of the past. Since my grandmother's passing, I have come to understand the truth of this idea in a completely different light.

I now live in a foreign country, many thousands of miles away from my childhood and my grandmother's house. When I am homesick, I can close my eyes and conjure in my mind a memory of home. But it is more than a mere recalling of the details of a place, of a location or the faces of the people who live in it. It is a feeling of warmth and safety and protectedness, of being surrounded by the people who raised and cared for me as I was growing up -- my mother, my aunt, my sister, and of course my grandmother. And when I remember home, when I reconstruct its flesh and bones within my mind, I never remember that my grandmother is no longer alive. In my memory of home, she is always there. In her house, filled with afternoon sunlight, she sits in her favorite armchair and hums an old hymn, off-key, to herself as she embroiders a patch of quilt. And I sit on the floor on an old, dusty rug, content and knowing that I am loved and cared for. In that moment I know that as long as the people who love her live, my grandmother will never die.

Friday, March 18, 2011

A Moment of Silence

Today, at 2:46 PM, we observed a moment of silence to mark one week since the earthquake and to honor the victims. My life has been irretrievably altered... I love this country, though. I think we've a few miles yet to travel together along this road. It is March 18th. In four more days, I will have been in Japan for an entire year.

日本、一緒に頑張りましょう。