Sacred Moments

Almost three years have passed since my Grandma passed...

The dull churning of my insides has eased and moments turn to hours that change into days...weeks...months...years...

But the empty pit deep down and tucked away sometimes rears it's face and sadness graces my being, wishing she was here.

She lived two doors down... a skip, a hop, a jump away...

If I was feeling lonely or that middle-child-syndrome was flaring up hard, I would race there...my bags packed for the night looking forward to the warmth from my precious grandma's house that always made me feel at home.  Her house was small and her surroundings quite meager but I couldn't have felt more safe any place else.

We sipped on tea from her corning-ware and my ears were filled with stories of her childhood and marriage and any other thing that could be talked about.  My Gram, she liked to talk.  And I loved to listen to her southern drawl as she fiddled with her collar bone, reaching for a necklace that wasn't there but telling stories that made me feel like I was back home with her down in her Kentucky blue.

We would sit and chat in that tiny kitchen where she cooked literally thousands of meals,,,

There was something almost sacred about that space.  I can remember watching her time the dinner.  The pressure cooker's high pitched whistle and the humid, hot air.  Soup beans, corn bread, salmon patties and tomato gravy waiting to smother warm biscuits right out of the oven.  Fresh green beans from the humble garden behind her garage that were snapped and broken on the front porch in her metal bowl while the cars sped by fast down Grange Road.

I still envision her sitting there and tend to look, even now, when I walk by or drive passed.

Oh how I miss her.

And tonight my uncle, who now lives there in that blue trimmed house where my daddy grew up, he brought me a cherished gift.

He brought me over one of her cups, and a couple other pieces of her dinnerware...

And my eyes took in the familiar white dishes with pea-green daisies.

Rushing thoughts flood as moments, remembered...

And how thankful and grateful I am for each memory.

How quickly this life may pass.

But how lavishly we can live in remembering these sacred moments that words cannot contain.  Because death may snatch our loved ones...young or old...but their memories will live on telling stories untold...