Part of the Messy Beautiful Project...
New Carpet
It
was August 9, 2001; I remember it was cloudy. August in North Carolina normally
didn’t look that way, which is probably why I remember it—that, and it was the
day my grandmother died.
She
was the greatest woman I had ever known, married to the greatest man there ever
was. My grandparents were my mentors, my role models, my heroes…
What I loved most was how my
grandparents loved each other…the beauty of their ripened romance—their dances
to no audible music, their embraces that knew no timetable, the way they talked
about each other like the other was a treasure. I loved being at their ranch…Grandma
would call, “Bernie!” if she needed more birdseed from the shed; and Grandpa
would say, “Yes, Mom,” and walk in his moseying way out the door. I loved
hearing their love story; I loved even more the light in their eyes as they
looked at each other while they shared it.
I
was standing in the living room when my mother called. I wasn’t too sad; I had
known it was coming. Even saints don’t live forever.
I
remember a story Grandma told me once. More of a picture than a story, I guess,
the way she described it: Once there was
a vase, a beautiful Chinese vase. It had pictures of little children and dragon
tails and little firework explosions. It was a very expensive vase, and one day
it fell—shattered into a thousand pieces. I was very sad because it was very
beautiful. But when everything broke, the inside was revealed: there was a
candle, a burning candle. I wondered how the candle got inside and how it
survived the fall. I watched it, wondering if there was anything I should do,
when a pair of hands appeared from outside the picture. I didn’t see a body,
just a pair of strong hands. One by one they put the pieces back together. The
glass cut his fingers, but he kept working on the vase. I never saw his face,
only his hands. And when the vase was complete it was more beautiful than
before because the light shone through the cracks. Oh, it was so beautiful.
“There
is beauty in the brokenness, Ned,” she would say to me. Beauty in the brokenness.
The
year preceding my grandmother’s death was a broken one, and it was hard to see
anything beautiful in it. In many ways, Grandma died on February 26, 2000, the
day Grandpa did. Her will to live broke into a thousand pieces, but the candle
inside just wouldn’t go out. It didn’t get the message.
I
remember her hair in the mornings, dripping like branches on a willow tree,
silver in the cool light of dawn. She would brush it with long strokes as if
she were strumming a harp. In a twist and an instant, her locks would
disappear, hidden in a bun. She always kept her hair in a bun. But in those
last years, she spared herself the hassle, let her hair fall over her shoulders
like a funeral shroud. She spent most of her days wearing a robe, unmotivated
to change her clothes. She complained of pain—pain when she sat, pain when she
walked, pain when she lay down, and pain when she stood up. She had pain
everywhere, all the time. My parents and relatives tried new furniture, pads,
and other things. But nothing made her comfortable. Nothing can comfort a
broken heart.
It
became apparent she could not live alone. She left the ranch. Her daughters
rotated responsibility, taking her in over the next year and a half. It was
very taxing and traumatic. She was numb and wanted to die, and my mother and
her sisters grew concerned. Drugs could not quell her depression. Therapy had
no positive effect. She spent a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital before
wasting away in a sterile, peaceful nursing home. She never saw the ranch
again.
It
was cloudy on the day of the funeral, too…Lia bought me some Buckeyes to cheer
me, my first— I had always resisted because I thought they were nuts. We held
hands for most of the journey home.
It
had been a long couple of days, with a lot of driving. I was happy to see our
condo when its wooden exterior came into view. I pulled the key out from the
ignition and grabbed our suitcase and garment bag; Lia unlocked the door.
We
walked inside, and it smelled like shit.
Chelsea (our dog) greeted us at the
door as if she had been through a bunker war. When Ella (our friend’s dog that
we had been dog sitting) pawed the sliding porch doors, she left shit-prints. The
walls of our condo looked like the smeared interior of a latrine. There was a
note on our kitchen counter from Jason, our dog-sitter, that read, “Call me.”
We did, and he told us the story.
Ella
had purportedly gotten into some discarded chicken scraps in the woods; our dog
sitter had found her gnawing on a drumstick in the middle of our living room. I
assume she brought it in as a souvenir. Before long she was in a corner taking
care of business. And as Jason scurried to clean up the mess, Ella was in
another corner unloading another log. Jason hurried over, and Ella wagged her
tail into a bedroom and let loose on a chair. That’s right, she crapped on the
couches. She dropped bombs on the coffee table. She shot shrapnel on the wall.
In a way it was rather impressive.
From
the foyer, we surveyed the damage. There were feces everywhere: on the
television, in the bathtub, on the Venetian blinds. There were deposits in
places that I, to this day, cannot fathom how she managed to poop them there.
And this had been going on nonstop since three o’clock yesterday. Jason claimed
cleaning upwards of fifty landmines before giving up. Why he hadn’t simply
moved her to the porch after the first shit, I don’t know. I cursed not owning
a fence.
Tiptoeing
through turds to the porch light, I saw Ella happy as could be, wagging and
dancing in a layer of her own poo.
Back
at the door, Lia erupted in tears. “Let’s move,” she said. “I can’t live here.”
“Lia,
it’s not that bad.” I sniffed. “OK, it is.”
We
found room between brown smears on our love seat, held each other, and cried.
In
1970, Grandpa left his engineering job to teach, become a cowboy, and spend
more time with his wife and girls. Unfortunately, as smart a man as he was, he
was pretty poor at business and had foolishly signed an extremely short
mortgage with an outlandish payment schedule, which he soon realized he
wouldn’t be able to pay. He tried to refinance, but the bank wouldn’t
reconsider. They gave him two options: come up with the cash or lose the ranch.
One
particularly hard day he came home and Grandma said he looked like he was dead.
His arms hung like a hanged man; his body slumped like a bag of flour. The
bankers had told him they were going to foreclose. He walked into the house and
met Grandma at the piano bench. They fell to the floor and into each other’s
arms. They cried and cried, and when the tears ran out, they kept crying on
without them.
And
somewhere in the sorrow, Grandma said God spoke ... She described it as a deep,
slow voice. When she would tell the story and get to the part where God talked,
she would swallow her chin into her neck and get real solemn ... “God said,
‘Remember this moment. It is the most beautiful moment of your life.’ In fact,
God said it twice,” said Grandma, “just so I’d get it.”
She
loved to tell that story. Then, she would tell the one about the miracle of how
they managed to keep the ranch. But I think she loved the first more because
they were the broken pieces, and in them a light was shining
... and over time, a pair of hands
put them back together.
When
I look back and think of my Grandparents, that must be where the beauty came
from—the light shining through the broken places of their marriage, of their
lives; the light revealing the fact they were only held together by grace,
love, and a pair of bloody hands …
Lia
and I cried and cried, and when the tears ran out, we kept on crying. We held each
other amidst the mess. And in that moment I saw things with my Grandparent’s
eyes: This is the most beautiful moment
of our lives. This is the most beautiful moment of our lives. Two times,
just so I’d get it.
I knew Lia wasn’t ready at the time to share in the epiphany. For once, I kept my mouth shut, but it didn’t change the holiness of the moment. It didn’t matter how much crap was in the room. It was a beautiful aroma. Licking the tears off my upper lip, I smiled. In my mind I saw a picture: a beautiful broken vase, a beautiful broken boy and girl, holding one another, held together by a pair of hands.
We decided it was time to buy new carpet.
this excerpt was taken from my book
Falling Into Love Buy it now!
and check out my newest book, CLAY It was written for broken people like you and me.
