I understand now...

From my adolescence onwards, my Grandma asked me what of her things I wanted.

It used to make me crazy.  I didn't really want any of her things. (And I took pride in my denial of material things.)  I wanted her stories, I wanted her to tell me about the places she'd been and the things she'd seen and everything she learned from those places and things.  But those were the things she wasn't readily willing to share.  And so for a long time we were at an impasse, she and I.

When I had the Boy, she sent me her rocking chair and I had grown up enough to accept it gratefully.  And every day, I would rock my Boy in that rocking chair.

And gradually over the last few years, her things have been creeping into my home.  Her knitting needles, one set at a time, pudding dishes and glass bowls, books, and cake pans.  So that now, there are bits and bobs of my Grandma in nearly every room of my small apartment.

Last night I was rocking my children in her rocking chair and thinking about my Grandma.  And that's when I think I understood for the very first time, why she was so eager to make sure that I would have something of hers.  Because our memories of people become tied to objects associated with them, because every time I rock my babies in her rocking chair I think of her.  Every time I knit my boy a pair of socks with her knitting needles, I think of her.  Because every time I see the bowls or the pans or the Thing, I think of my Grandma.

She died early this morning.  My Dad called me at dawn to tell me that she had moved on.

And while I still wish that she had told me her stories, I'm grateful for the things she gave me.  Because now there are memories of my Grandma in the most unpredictable places.  So that as I go about my day, I can remember her.

And maybe that's all she really wanted all along.

Athens Flashback

Imagine Christmas 2005.

Knowing my irrational affection for A Christmas Carol, Chris notices that a graduate student will be performing it as part of his MFA thesis performance. There will be digital projections for the ghosts at different points, and wouldn't that be cool? Also, one of my students was playing Bob Cratchitt, and he was a really cool kid. So I clapped my hands like a delighted child and we bought tickets.

We arrive ridiculously early, for I am a dork and I like to be early for stage performances because the people watching is almost as rewarding as a really good play. We take our seats, down in front because, again, the prospect of seeing one of my all time favorites dramatized made me quite excited.

While we were sitting and people watching, who should happen to come in but the professor of my Shakespeare seminar, Dr. Teague! And who is that tall, bearded man with her? Wait! She introduces him, he is her husband Ben. He has that perpetually jolly demeanor that is so bewtiching about Santa Clause. After 10 minutes of conversation with the pair, I turn around absolutely certain of their mutual affection for one another and that their's is a happy marriage--almost certainly with much laughter.

We watch the production. It is...alarming. Some things were done wonderfully...others can only be described as disturbing...but that is the risk you run with stage adaptations of beloved novels. And the production isn't really the point here. The point is this:

Ben Teague was 63 when he was killed at the beloved Town and Gown Theater in Athens. You know that crazy story of the university professor who went nuts and killed his ex-wife and "two others" at the local community playhouse? One of those others was Ben Teague.

I can't stop thinking about Dr. Teague.

I can see her face so clearly in my mind. I can hear her voice. She is a rare woman. She thinks deeply but laughs easily. Her office is filled with books but she is the first to admit her own limitations as a scholar. She can talk about Southpark one minute and Shakespeare the next. She admittedly watches the Simpsons, Southpark and who knows what else on television. She is a gifted scholar but without the taint of gravitas. She still cries at the end of Romeo and Juliet and who even knows how many times she's read it.

I can't stop thinking about her.

I can't stop seeing how she and Ben looked that night three and half years ago...just out for a small time play, but happy to be together. Both of them brimming with joie de vivre. Both of them plain and round, but so happy to be together that you couldn't help but be drawn to the pair of them.

Salman Rushdie wrote that homicide is a violent crime against the one killed, but suicide is a violent crime against those who remain behind. I can't help but think that this homicide was also a violent crime against those left behind.

I can't stop thinking about her.

I've looked her up online. I could sign a remembrance book at the local paper. I could send her an email or a card in the mail. She doesn't hide. I could probably even find her on facebook. But I can't bring myself to actually do those things. What is there to say? How does one find words for such a loss? Is there any conceivable way that those words, any words wouldn't sound trite?

And yet. I can't stop thinking about her.