I'm thinking of my grandma, I'm thinking of my mom. Virginia Alberta Burson, gone by Thanksgiving '98. Saint Ginney, Grandma Rock, took guff off of no one... always there, always there when times were too tough to continue. Grandma Astrology, Reincarnation, Grandma whose beliefs always ended up in my mindset, except for one.. except for the old-fashionedness and danger of prejudice. I could always overlook because that was never all of her circle.. and it was a big circle. I swear, sometimes I can see her influence in my thoughts, and probably will till I go myself to some white light, someplace with no fear or pain, I swear it on my mother's grave.
My mother's grave lays near where she once stood in mourning for Virginia, for Harold, for the non-survivor twin of a younger brother, and then years later, for three-day-old Christopher. My mother's grave marker spells out the name: Linda Lee Hall, and there floods a lifetime of memory, brief snatches of birthday parties with special touches, handmade ornaments at Christmas time. The good, the bad, the ugly, the breaks where she faltered and hospitalized, weak, dizzy in mental fluff, I thought her weak for that, I am guilty of that. Guilty. Of judging too harshly, of not understanding, how the loss of a child could break a person. I was a child myself, how could I base a judgement, not knowing the facts? But base I did, base I am now for doing so. Deemed her weak and needy. Then. But we go on, we always go on. Through the years and the watching, through the family reunions, where the funniest stories of how Centralia's Aunt Margaret at 12 climbed the water tower, just because it was there, "the longest red hair, that's how you could tell it was Margaret." Through Thanksgivings and Christmases, and New Years...
All the way to the year 2000. So many trips to the hospital, among all the radiation and chemo, and such long all day sessions they were, complete with the waiting, the waiting.
And there (I wasn't ready) to hear the chaplain tell us he was there to make her ready with the Lord. I was always the first one to say she would surely fight such finality, knowing by then what it took to go through the loss of hair, the nausea, the rheumatoid arthritis, the bouts with broken bones, the falls, loss of appetite, the wasting away into unconsciousness was not weakness, but strength.
They are both deeply missed.