There is a puzzle on the table in the living room. A large one, with tiny pieces and impossible
color gradients that make it somewhat uninviting. And yet we drift in and out, sitting before
it, trying this piece then that, until we eventually get a match or walk away.
Or flop over on the couch.
The wooden floors of Gram’s house echo the goings on: a
cluster of great-grandchildren playing a game on the family room rug; the
clanging of dishes in the kitchen, George’s mandolin trembles in some
unidentifiable place. Ann Marie’s hands
roll in and out of the edges of a baby blanket, her fingers guiding her crochet
hook. There is a swirl of motion, gentle and uninhibited, so graceful and alive
that if you set a camera on slow, slow shutter speed you would have a sort of Spir-o-graph
picture of the people we love loving the people we love. We are spokes, swirling
around a hub, each of us going in and out from the center. And she is center.
Gram lies in her bed, her soft white hair like a halo on her
pillow, her eyes closed and her forehead smooth and calm. Her hands lie gentle on her midriff. We watch them rise and fall, rise and
fall. I sit beside her, my brothers and
sisters and children taking turns in the circle. No plan.
We’ve never been that good at keeping plans. No shifts or schedules, yet she is never
alone. Never alone.
I slip my hand under hers and hold it in a sacred grip, her
slender fingers interlace with mine. I
trace the veins with my thumb.
In and out we go and come, until someone picks up a guitar
and starts to sing to Mom. Then, as if
the Pied Piper has pursed his lips against his pipe, we gather in her large, gracious
bedroom, and the other guitars make their way in, and the mandolin, too. And the voices and the songs. We cluster around her, comforting her with
our song… comforting each other…comforting ourselves. Then the comfort turns to
joy when the Johns play and we sing full voiced and our hands no longer tickle
our guitar strings but pull them full bore and passionately, like she would if
she had ever gotten past the two chords I tried to teach her when I was 16.
Too bad it’s not September, when the air has cooled enough
for the windows to be left open. What
songs our neighbors would hear!
Grandson John pulls the strings of his instrument and
begins…They say everything can be
replaced…. We join in with harmony
at the chorus…I see my light come shining
from the west down to the east. Any day
now, any day now, I shall be released.
Like chicks around a hen, like petals on a flower, like the
waters of the Snake River swirl around an outcropping of rock and earth, we are
helpless to leave her and will stay here until she leaves us. Just a while.
Just a small parting, small, but very, very deep.
Not far from here her mother will call and tell her to come,
and we know we must let her go. Until
then we will keep this vigil, we who cherish her, and sing her to the gate.