Sarah Morgan
The musty-smelling sheaf of papers has treasures mixed in with mundanity. Like life does.
I notice that he printed in block capitals. Just like me. And just like my dad and my uncles.
I wonder if he could draw like us too. I never asked.
He was in college when the war broke out. His friends said he could’ve played major-league ball. How many things could he have been if things had been different?
His writing was shaky and messy – he was nearly 80 at the time he wrote these pages. But whenever he wrote ANITA, the word is extra dark. Either he unconsciously pressed hard in writing his late wife’s name, or he deliberately went back and retraced the letters of her name.
At his funeral, my father told a story of being twelve years old and shining shoes for him at the kitchen table one afternoon while she stood at the sink. He tiptoed in past his son and grabbed her bottom.
Ever the lady, she dropped her dishtowel, spun around and slapped him.
He grabbed her, dipped her, and kissed her in the kitchen, the mother of his five children, one weekday afternoon before a long night of work, six years before cancer would take her from him.
That’s what’s going on now up in heaven, my father said. His parents, my grandparents, were having one of those Hollywood-style kisses, for how hard they had loved each other, and for how much he had missed her for thirty-five years.
What more could anyone ask of heaven?
Thanks for reminding me that there is true, timeless romance in the world just waiting for the right people to meet.
I smile at your beautifully written reflections of your Grandparents, both for the people I see them to be and your recognition of it. I hope my family remembers me as more than the person who drove them to soccer, cheered them in their endeavors, took lots of photos, and weeded my gardens. My parents and grandparents felt my same passion for life, partook in secret caresses in crowds and sat in awe at sunsets and fireworks. They loved animals, cried at personal losses and held each other in their own private moments. How blessed you are to recognize your Grandparents’ spirits.
[…] grandmother died of cancer when she was only 44, but nobody could have loved or been loved any fiercer, any wider, any deeper, not in any lifetime. She was that kind of […]