HER VOICE

I wish I knew her voice. I long to know her voice. But there is nothing to recall. 

I never knew my grandmother, at least not in this life. She died when my mom was fifteen years old. Mom told me once that she carried a big old wad of regret because when they were standing in a blizzard at her mother’s freshly dug grave, all she could think about was how the snow was ruining her new hat.

All I know of Grandma Parrish came to me in stories and black and white photographs. I was too young and disinterested, when my aunts and uncles were still telling stories, to ask for more about her. I wonder what I would have called her. I wonder if she was the type that would have earned or wanted an endearing name other than Grandmother. When someone calls me Gummy my heart automatically shifts to its happy place. It pinches at my heart to not know what I would call her.

George (center) and Lizzie (right)
and a bunch of other people I don't know

What is it that makes me think of her so often? It’s really quite curious to me, that I think of her so much. I wonder what portion of it is the kind of thing that rustles the fabric of the veil dividing this life from the next, and what portion is longing, and what part is just simple curiosity.
I want to know what part of my mother was dripped into her from her mother, either through DNA or experience. I want to know what kept her moving forward, and what sort of things stopped her in her tracks. We are told she sang at funerals often, and I know she played in the Blackfoot Grange Kitchen Band, so I believe she had a lovely voice, one prone to give comfort. And one prone to some portion of laughter, sprung from a healthy dose of good humor.

I ache to know her. I guess there will be a long time, not too far off, when we can remedy that.

She is central, with drumsticks on an upended pot.
The Blckfoot Grange Kitchen Band.

When I stop myself, and stop the noise of the world around me, I can recall my mother’s voice. I can hear her in all sorts of moods, gentle and reassuring, firm with anger, confident in business transactions. I can hear her laughing, humming, singing, calling us in for supper. I know my mother’s voice.
But I long to know the tones of my grandmother.

Today, in my email, there was a message from the Family Search website, telling me when and where my Grandmother Elizabeth May Wood Parrish received her sacred temple endowments and where she was married. This photograph appeared:

Elizabeth May Wood Parrish
1883-1939

I had never seen it before. I stared at it, inhaling and exhaling, thinking on some illogical level that if I stared long enough I might beckon her here.

She is young. Her dress is pleated, with a tidy high collar accented with a pin or button under the chin. Her dark hair is pulled up in a soft bun. Her eyes are bright and focused. 

The website told me that she married at 19, like I did. In the temple, like I did. Was she as innocent and inexperienced as I was? Did she make similar mistakes? Her own mother had died when she was young. What could she have known of bearing children, of marriage? Where was her mother to show her how to bathe her baby, or how to help him attach at the breast? I hurt for her. I rejoice with her.

I look at this photograph, where her eyes seem to be looking straight into mine, and I wonder what she might think of me; the second-to-youngest daughter of her second-to-youngest daughter. Today she would have found me hunkered down in my bed, all cozy in my soft down pillow, sleeping the morning away. I wish I knew how she might respond to that. Would she urge me to rise, without judgement? Would she bang the cast iron griddle against the stove to subtly call me to arms in the kitchen? I cannot imagine her yanking me out of bed, but she might. She might! And perhaps she should, if she knew me. "So we're having a bit of a worldwide crisis, are we? Well, this world has had crises before. Sleeping through it is beneath you, don't you think?" She might say this, or she might tell me to sleep while I can, and then, by golly, get up and get to work!

Harvesting Idaho potatoes.

Wherever you are today, Grandmother, will you put your arms around my mother for me, and for my siblings, and my kids? We miss her somethin’ awful. Will you ask her about us, so that when we meet, you might know a bit of who we are? Meanwhile, I’ll try to make myself do what I imagine you might want me to do, because like it or not, our voices are linked in a large eternal family choir. I hope I sing next to you one day.

My grandmother, there on the right, her hands resting on
the shoulders of my mother, Afton. My Aunt Becky,
her eleventh child,  is still nestled in her womb.
She would be around 45 years old here.
I am tired for her.
Not ten years later she would fly up to Heaven.