There’s a road nearby that takes you over the crests of a few hills, a shortcut to the interstate. It’s part of the mundane rural life, an oft crossed route needed to transport you from seclusion to civilization. But on some days, I can look off into the distance and see the rolling hills of San Simeon, California. Herds of cattle and all. It’s one of the many instances where my life in California shows up in tiny visions here in Virginia. They feed the nostalgia I feel for the big dumb state I love so much I could just hug it like the big bear on souvenir mugs. But that nostalgia has begun to turn into a sweet recalling of that life, especially in light of the ways in which God has shown me why I am exactly where I am meant to be.
That understanding of purpose remained murky this year, until an episode bordering on a panic attack hit me as I was driving home from work one day and wrapped all the details of this year in a big bow. I would have missed the deepening of my relationship with my mom, but I also would have missed the forging of a new relationship with my Great Aunt Dorothy, who had passed less than a week before this grief episode.
Aunt Dorothy, or Aunt Dot as she was known to much of the family, was the sister of my Grandmother, my mom’s mother. She was a fixture throughout my childhood, her home providing our lodging in the summers as we escaped the Florida heat for the mild climate of the Shenandoah Valley. She, along with my other aunts, would dote over me and my siblings like grandmothers do. Cooking hearty Southern meals, providing toys and adventures for us in their backyards, and showing us a love of old things at the various antique malls and auctions we frequented. This was the Aunt Dorothy I knew and loved all through my adolescence, to whom I would send the occasional card to in college and with whom I would visit during holiday breaks spent in Virginia.
It was this vision of Aunt Dorothy I would have to retire when I began to stay with her a few nights a week to cut down on the commute to my new job. We started off on a low note when I arrived about 15 minutes after I said I would be there and she was ready to call the cops to come look for me. It was a learning moment for me to understand her experience and where she was coming from when she was upset that I was late. We recovered and began building a mutual relationship where she provided a refuge from work and I would curl her hair.
We’d watch the gospel hour on public television on Sundays and followed the bartender from New York as he continued his Jeopardy streak day to day before being unseated by a new competitor. I delighted in showing her the downtown of the city she’d call home for decades, and was now experiencing its own renaissance with new shops and restaurants. She visited my work and politely suggested to the owner that he should think about providing housing to his employees above the shop to make it easier on us. We laughed a lot and I loved her sense of humor.
*Cop puts on their sirens and blazes past our car*
Aunt Dorothy: He must be on his way to see his girlfriend.
Me: Hmm, yeah.
Aunt Dorothy: He wouldn’t drive like that to see his wife.
Me and Dorothy: *fits of laughter*
On our last outing together, we went to her doctor for routine blood work that showed her in good health before taking care of our respective grocery lists. We capped our day with lunch downtown at a friend’s restaurant before stepping into the jewelry store next door. It was an establishment she remembered from decades earlier and she enjoyed the new changes as well as the preserving of the beautiful wooden display cases. We made plans to bring in jewelry to repair that had been languishing in a drawer at home.
It was a perfect day that I would recall in the weeks to come as I struggled to come to terms with the end of Aunt Dorothy’s long life. It was in this time that I struggled to breathe through tears as I drove down the interstate to the point I pulled over at an exit to recover. Fate had given me a greater gift amongst the grief I felt and the pain I had experienced over the year. It had given me a relationship forged in blood connection but also mutual love and respect. A relationship that can only exist between women bound together by family and a desire to live independently.
This silver lining, this calm after the storm isn’t enough to cure my grief at the moment. I find myself full of tears at inopportune moments and know that even after letting my emotions express themselves in this way, I will be hit again by a wave of emotion I can’t contain. The tears, however, are just a symptom of the problem of grief. Whereas this exercise in writing, this post, is the problem of grief spelled out, laid bare, forcing a processing of the pain experienced.
Grief tends to join itself with grief demanding a larger and larger space in your life. But it is stunted by an antidote of new sunrises, new experiences, and new relationships that remind you of your precious life in this temporal realm.
