Lessons learned at my Grandma's table
The Gospel reading the Sunday of the week that Grandma died has always been one I find challenging. It’s the parable of the ten virgins – five wise and five foolish. Their job was to mee the bridegroom at the city gates and light his path to the wedding feast – and he was delayed. Since it’s late, they all fall asleep. When the shouts of his arrival awake them, they tend to their lamps. The wise brought their own oil. The foolish didn’t. The foolish ask the wise for some oil, and are refused – instructed instead to go buy some of their own. (that’s the part that has always confused me) So, they leave and end up not only missing the banquet but are denied entrance at all – the whole purpose for their being.
It has always seem uncharitable to me; why not share some; even just a little? That refusal – because it’s incongruous – is our clue to the meaning of the oil and the lamp.
Writing about Grandma Ellen’s life and impact has been a task I’ve avoided. How do I sum up the life of a woman so integral to my own? I feel as though I have lived my whole life immersed in her light and I cannot imagine not carrying her with me. For my entire 44 years, I basked in the light of her love – and the gift and privilege of that length is not lost on any of us.
This past week, I helped put together the photo boards and finding pics of my grandma in her working years – by herself – was difficult. When you do find one, she is either wearing an apron, bent over working or looking as if she could use a stiff drink and a long drag of a cigarette – two things she’d never do.
Grandma preferred to be in the background. She knew her expertise and the places she loved – the farm, her home, the kitchen, the sewing room. She was content to let Grandpa serve in the public light, while supporting him with her faithful prayers at home.
As kids, Grandma must have enjoyed our imaginings and group play, keeping us well satiated with Grandma tea and cookies. Sugaring us up because we loved it…and maybe paying back our mothers for leaving her with babysitting duties all day. 😉
In Grandma’s kitchen, we learned the secrets to the shaping the perfect butt-biscuit, mouth-watering cinnamon rolls, cookies perfect for dunking in tea, flaky pie crusts and whipping cream, cutting corn, making jam, and freezing fruit. She was great at including us in her daily labors and teaching us some of the secrets to making a house a home. In the blankets, she lovingly crafted for us wrapped us in her love when apart. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the body reveals the soul…what is visible makes known the invisible.
Grandma’s house was a place of comfort, acceptance, fun, good food, and stuffed floor to ceiling with relics of the past for exploring. Grandma’s closets and dressers were gold mines for the imagination – and there was no shortage! If heaven is anything like my Grandma’s house, then I’ll look forward to it.
That house was a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing or just sitting and thinking best, or a perfect mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.
~JRR Tolkien
Of course, it’s after growing up that you realize it wasn’t just the place. The home represents the would who dwell there. And I’ve had the privilege to grow up in houses – my grandma’s, my aunts, my own, and now my cousins – where simply walking in the door allows you to set down the burdens you carry for moment.
There was always enough at Grandma’s. Need a bed? There’s a few; will a davenport do? There’s some in the basement, too. Need more rolls? Check the freezer. Need a blanket? If you can’t find one that’ll do, you can sew one for yourself and those you love. And there was never a shortage of reading material in the bathroom. In fact, I’m convinced the key to making people think you read a lot is just to keep a pile of reading material near your chair, on the table, in the bathroom….
If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
~St. Theresa of Calcutta
I feel very fortunate to know my grandmother as an adult. What I had accepted as “Grandma” as a child – love, food, warmth – I realize now took work and effort and choice. Not that she ever said it; she didn’t need to. Her wisdom was expressed in her deeds. Wisdom is a lived relationship with what God has revealed to us, and Grandma possessed wisdom.
As I got older, I enjoyed simply putting on the kettle and settling in for a chat with a Grandma. Here, I began to realize how FUNNY she was. One of my favorite Grandma witticisms came by comparing Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to ‘retire’ with the Gambler: You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em….
Growing up, Grandma had a reputation of being a worrier, but that’s not how I see her. She is a pray-er. Any problem we told her about, she had a solution – which was usually to offer it up and a saint to pray to. Protestant Jessica didn’t understand, but now I do.
Our Grandma had a hard life growing up. There wasn’t a lot. She often felt out of place, and that she wasn’t enough – as smart, as witty, as pretty…. But she kept on. She remained faithful in small things, doing what she knew to do, and entrusting her hopes to God.
She certainly knew the power of saddling your horse to the right cart, and I’ve been awed at Grandma’s wisdom to hold out hope for someone like Grandpa Joe. I lamented her prayers of protection when I was “eternally single” in high school and college and most of my 20s…and am also eternally grateful God listened to her.
Our Grandma had a hard life in her middle ages, too. She experienced several miscarriages, and buried two sons after carrying them nearly full-term…and then a third son in his prime. Like Mother Mary, sorrow pierced Grandma’s heart in several ways.
She entrusted her suffering and sorrow into Mary’s hands – hoping that God’s healing graces, through Mary’s prayers, would soothe her ache. In the last five years, I discovered that Grandma held a devotion to the Miraculous Medal – to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, which depicts rays of healing light extending from our Blessed Mother’s hands to all those who ask. Perhaps, it is through her intercession that Grandma found the strength to carry her losses to the cross, and to be able to wrap us in love. Many of the burdens and challenges we have faced, she did, as well.
At a young age, I remember Grandma ministering to others through hospice. I didn’t understand it then, but recognized that it had something to do with dying. Because she united her suffering to Jesus’ sacred heart, she could sit with others in theirs. This grace given to hear allowed her to embody Christ to others in their need.
As her grandchildren, this is where some of us encountered her great love. After my husband Dan passed, I sat at my grandmother’s table. The tears in my eyes expressed the depth of grief I never knew existed…and she did. Holding me as I let out all the hurt and pain, her prayers encircled my broken heart. It was the purest prayer and deepest healing, I have experienced. Grandmas was our channel to the Holy Spirit.
Her greatest gifts to us came by way of her kitchen table. The tangible and intangible, the physical and spiritual, the laughter and tears, served up whenever we needed.
…and now.
Now we say the goodbye we have been spared so long. We pray her into her Master’s joy and rest. …and what of the light of her lamp we’ve basked in for so long?
Those who are our foundation in faith, who have been our example in faith, hope and love – they are lights on our path. If we rely on their faith alone and do not cultivate our own, how great is the darkness when they are gone!
If we rely upon their faith and their prayers and without cultivating our own, the void their passing brings! We cannot buy it from an outside source; if we have basked in the light of their lamp and not tended to our own – we miss the opportunity of their light, example and life – to teach us how to tend to our own, to tend to the faith they so longed to see aflame in our hearts during their lifetime.
May we embrace the example of faith, hope and love that Grandma Ellen embodied for us, and by the power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit carry our lights into the world that is so in need of comfort.
