Christmas Day found us snuggled in close. The kids all home. Snow falling and falling and falling. Piles of good food and heaps of presents. Laughter and love slipping from our hearts and filling us back up at the same time.
Heart full, I checked my phone at the end of the day. One message stared back at me from the screen. My Grandpa has passed on.
In the most poetic of ways, the great Poet of my childhood, the one who always made me feel seen, safe, and loved, had passed on. On Christmas. A man of faith who always had one eye on earth and one on eternity. A man who fully lived his life here while longing to go “home”. He was finally home. After 100 years on this earth.
grief is praise
Gone. Leaving a hole that words fail to fill. Grief washes over me like the waves of the ocean, the salt from my tears rolling with the endless expanse. My grief is praise to the greatness of my Grandpa.
~Martin Prechtel in The Smell of Rain on Dust.
“Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses. ”
Grandpa the preacher
My grandpa was called to be a preacher long before I was born. The son of an Amish farmer and author, my grandpa was ordained by lot as a pastor in the Mennonite church when he was 34 years old.
One of my earliest memories of him is both a confusing and painful one. I remember sitting in the pew one Sunday morning. Swinging my legs in the air because they did not yet reach the floor. I looked down at my new blue dress, lovingly fingering the three Holly Hobby Buttons that were stitched on the front. Admired the soft ruffle that edged the skirt. After what felt like an eternity, Grandpa got up and began his sermon.
While his exact words elude me, the admonishment passed on to me that day was that women should not wear frilly things. I looked from my cute little buttons and my ruffled skirt up to the woman I was sitting with. I can’t remember if it was my mother or one of my aunts. But I know it was a woman because the women still sat on one side of the church and the men on the other. I remember looking up in confusion, wondering what we should do about my new dress. I went from feeling pretty and happy, to confused and dismayed.
In many ways, I have spent many years since then trying to figure out what to do about that dress. The teachings of family and church in my early years left me with an unconscious belief that I, as a woman, should never look beautiful. That little girl in her cute little new dress was shut behind a door inside of me until I finally realized I could not fully live until I gave her a voice and a place.
Grandpa my friend
But here is the exquisite piece – my Grandpa loved me no matter what. He saw me, the shy little girl who grew to love crafting words as much as he did. Who shared his love for cherry delight and brown sugar frosting piled on thick. The country girl who grew to love wandering the hills and praying out loud with only the trees and stones of the brook, the birds, and the squirrels as fellow worshipers.
One of my happiest childhood days was spent at his side. My parents had moved us from Ohio to Arizona. One winter, my Grandparents drove out to stay with my brothers and I while my parents went on a trip. Now grandpa walked every day of his life that he was able. If it was icy out, he would walk loops in the house. Nothing deterred him from moving his feet to the rhythm that thrummed inside his giant heart.
So on one particular day in Phoenix, my grandpa decided to take his walk up a nearby mountain. And he wanted my brother and I to join him. He called the school to get permission and we were allowed to take the entire day off. I loved school but when I put my feet on the mountain path and breathed in the fresh clear air that only exists in places like that, the air of the classroom felt like a stuffy memory. Walking up the mountain with Grandpa woke something up inside of me and I have been in love with walking and with mountains ever since.
grandpa the famous
At church, the next Sunday, the visiting pastor, who was quite famous in our circles, nearly shrieked from the pulpit when he recognized my Grandpa sitting in the pews. I felt so proud to be linked to this famous person that my Grandpa was.
Years later I found myself sitting in another pew. This time behind my parents as they waited for my grandpa and another visiting pastor to come out of the side room with the hymnals that were used for ordination by lot in our denomination. I saw the slip of paper in my dad’s hymnal a fraction of a second before he did and I felt the weight that my grandpa felt at his own ordination. As a woman, I would never have a place of leadership in our Mennonite circle, yet I felt a weight that literally shook my shoulders as if I would be the one to bear this new responsibility.
Always welcoming
Time moved on and so did our family, eventually settling in the Carolinas. We didn’t get to see Grandpas very often. But when we made the trip back to Ohio and would walk through that door, Grandpa would always come to welcome us with arms wide open.
“Ooohhh my! If it isn’t Marita! Mamma, come see who is here!” And he would envelop me in his arms and hold me close to his heart for a minute. Letting me know that no matter where my journey took me, I would still always belong.
Black Sheep
What I wouldn’t give for one more of those hugs. Because of COVID, I didn’t get to say goodbye to him and that brings a sharp edge to my grief.
If I’m being honest though, I suppose I have kept myself away more than necessary over the past few years because I have felt like the black sheep of the family. The same ancient texts and the teachings of loving the Divine with all I’ve got. Loving my neighbor as myself. These same teachings have brought me to a very different practice of faith. It first took my feet across the ocean. Then it brought me home. Now it’s taken my feet to rallies and protests. Opened my mouth to support queer people. Refugees. Immigrants. Black Lives. Lately, it’s caused me to mask up and stay away. It’s opened my eyes to recognize the Divine in the most unexpected places and in people I would have been taught cannot house the Divine. Yet there It is.
I think part of me has kept a distance because I felt like the odd one out. The lone Democrat in a family of Republicans. The one who has left the faith – when in reality, my faith has never felt more real. More true. And my soul more whole. I didn’t want to disappoint. Neither did I like the feeling of being so different. Of perhaps not belonging anymore. In this way, my grief is praise to the tight feeling of belonging I once had.
Grandpa’s girlfriends
Yet Grandpa would always envelop me and welcome me home. No matter what. Even when his eyes could no longer recognize me, his heart did. And he would laugh and be so glad that one of his girlfriends had come to see him.
You see, there were 5 of us granddaughters and 12 grandsons. He took to calling us his 5 girlfriends. He would periodically take us out for breakfast and, after a morning of stories and laughter, he would ask the waitress for the check. Always letting her know that these were his girlfriends.
While Holmes County and the Mennonite world may know him as a preacher, he was so much more than that.
Poet. Hiker. Entrepreneur. Author. Storyteller. Historian. Generous giver. Nurturer. Leader. Teacher. Salesman. Joke-teller. Brother. Father. Lover. Grandpa. Friend.
Grief is praise
Moving across the ocean several times, compressing my belongings to several suitcases, has caused me to loosen my hands and let go of many things. Yet somehow, I kept a letter that Grandpa wrote to me when I lived in Brooklyn. I had traveled to Ohio for the holidays and left my coat at his house when I left. He took it to his store where he sent it UPS. When I pulled it from the box, in my tiny apartment in New York, I found a sweet letter that he had written to me. I pulled out that letter Christmas night and read it once again. I read again how he had given my coat a couple of extra hugs and prayed over it before he sent it. Held the letter to my heart in one hand. Squeezed the Holly Hobby buttons I had saved in the other…and wept.
Tears of grief. Tears of Praise.
I lost a great love. But I had a great love.
Loss is complex. Loss is simple. Grief is praise. And in this way, grief is good.
It leaves a hole because something was there. Something that spent a lifetime of growing and giving and blooming.
I think about all he was. The enormous role he filled for so many. The impact of his life. And I look around. At my father and his siblings. My brothers and my cousins. My children and the other great-grandchildren. The great greats who have come and those who will come. And I see him. There is a bit of him in each of us because, well, I suppose it takes that many of us to hold all the pieces of who he was. And now still is.
He was our legend. And we are always his.
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