The ordeal of knowing and being known
Our quirks will not die with us. Those who loved us will remember them.
When my grandfather was in the hospital nearing the end of his life, there was a whiteboard in his ICU room listing the care goals for the day. He didn’t have many, and the section for “Respiratory” had been left blank by the nurses. But when I went to see him for the very last time—the day that he died, in fact—one of my cousins had written on the whiteboard. In sloppy green marker it said “Respiration: Hut Hut!”
For years and years, I didn’t know this was military slang that had entered the American lexicon by way of football. I just thought it was something Pop-pop said. It was his trademark sound for entering a room, for clearing his throat, for setting up a grandchild with a baseball bat and the proper stance for hitting a tennis ball clear across the back yard. When my oldest cousin was a toddler, family lore says he marched around the house after Pop-pop as soon as he learned to walk, wearing a too-big baseball cap and shouting, “Hut hut!”
I thought of that scribbled note as I composed a eulogy for my grandfather. His forty years of grandparenting and the ten grandchildren that tagged after him, eating his breakfast off his plate and asking him to play chess, spanned vastly different lifetimes and experiences. There were six boys and four girls and it was rare that we were all in the same room at the same time. One of us left this world before Pop-pop did. There wasn’t much that we all had in common, except Grandmom and Pop-pop and the warm detergent scent of their vast old house. And every one of us remembered the “hut-hut.” When I brought up this and other anecdotes at the funeral, it steadied my voice to see my cousins laughing through their tears.
My grandfather lived a long, full life. When he passed at 88, we’d known the end was coming. That didn’t make it easier, but it helped us prepare.
Last week, I lost my friend Holly. It seems almost wrong, selfish maybe, to say that I lost my friend. She was not just my friend. She was a wife and mother and grandmother and a friend to far more people than just me. To phrase it this way seems like I am claiming some right to mourn harder than others, and that’s not what I’m trying to do. But the hole she has left in my life is no less significant because she was loved by so many.
Holly was here one day, and then she wasn’t. She was a force to be reckoned with, a constant drive for kindness and service and helping people who needed tangible love and support, and then a devastating brain bleed took her out. The last email exchange I had with her is from just a few days before she went into the ICU. We were talking about plans for the next school year, for the English as a Second Language (ESL) class we teach together—taught together— the class I will go back to in September without her.
Maybe I should have waited until I had more closure to write this, until it was less fresh and raw, but I’m doing it anyway.
When Holly was in the ICU, a group of us from our church who knew and loved her gathered to pray and process together. As we talked, we realized each woman in the circle had come that night thinking she had something special to offer the group, a close connection with Holly that the others had not had the gift of experiencing. But in reality we’d all been made to feel like her dearest and closest friend. She had been there for some of us for decades, and for others (me) just a few years, but we each knew her intimately in a different way. And each of us had a story about how she had, somehow or other, roped us into helping somehow.
Holly was not the kind of person to guilt-trip. You know the kind of “church lady” who makes you feel like you’re somehow letting Jesus down if you don’t show up to stack chairs after a potluck? She wasn’t like that. She didn’t deal in making people feel bad. Instead, she showed up first and then came to you privately, laid her hand on your arm, looked up into your eyes (she was quite short!) and said, “I have been thinking and praying about this, and I think you are perfect for this role.” And then she would tell you where help was needed, whether it was collecting donations for a refugee family or providing transportation for an elderly lady or teaching an English class even when you think you can’t do it.
I cried so much that night. My friends cried so much that night. (I thought I had cried all my tears, but! guess what! I have more, spilling out even as I write this!) But even as we cried together and passed around a box of tissues, we were laughing about the memories we all had in common. The little things, like that arm grip and the earnest stare into your soul. “I have been thinking and praying about this…”
How could you say no to someone whose whole life was one generous, hands-outstretched yes?
Neither my grandfather nor my friend lived in the public eye. Their obituaries, though filled with love, listed no great deeds. They hit the high points: born, educated, married, worked, gave, loved, died. There was no mention of their idiosyncrasies, the way they said things and the kind of cake they liked to eat. Anyone can read a funeral home webpage and find out where the departed went to school; only those who knew them will remember the face they made when someone said something stupid.
It is the biggest things that will be remembered publicly. But it is the little ones that bind those of us who remain together. For many years to come— I hope— people who remember little bits of Holly and little bits of Pop-pop will gather and share those memories. I felt this last week as I stood beside my aunt at my brother’s wedding reception, watching a horde of young people stomp and turn and clap. “Remember Pop-pop dancing at Carolyn’s wedding?” I asked her. “He was so into it. He’d be right out there with them right now.”1 And suddenly we both welled up. It hurt a little to cry at such a happy moment, and at the same time it was like that shimmer of ozone after a rain, a gentle warmth.
As I thought about grief and loss and the ties that bind this week, I read a post from a dear writing friend who is going through something very similar. Isn’t it funny how that happens? She wrote poignantly about missing those who have loved us into being, and it struck a chord for me.
Christmas will come again this year and Pop-pop won’t be there, won’t make that weird yodeling noise when he opens a jar of the chocolate buttercreams I made for him. I will make the buttercreams anyway, and the rest of my family will eat them. They never fail me in this endeavor. This fall I will teach ESL again, and I will step into that classroom without Holly. When I write new vocabulary words too high on the whiteboard, she will not be there to gently rib me about making sure I wipe them off, since she can’t reach. I will tell my incoming students about her. I will probably cry. I will definitely cry. The new intro-level class will not know her. But I will remember. I will pass out books she chose and purchased, and consult notes that she wrote.
She was left-handed. Did you know that? I knew.
Okay, maybe not doing all the steps to Cotton-Eye Joe. Poetic license.
I'm sorry you experienced these losses, but isn't it an absolutely wonderful thing to know that we can experience such intense feelings because there are people who have been so important to us (even if we don't realize it until after they are gone)?
Take time today to share your feelings with someone who still alive... even if all you do is squeeze their hand or give a silent hug. But if you can do or say more, by all means do or say more.
This was beautiful!