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Posts Tagged ‘family’

Reality

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 7, 2025| 1 Comment »

The only constant in grief

Image of Robert by Author

If I pretend hard enough, this awful reality won’t be true.

Robert’s truck is in the driveway. He must be out in his shop working.

He isn’t in his chair. He must have gone to Braum’s to buy milk.

A delivery came to the door. No doubt more car parts he ordered!

He receives emails and text messages on his phone. He has to respond.

See? Proof he’s still with me.

All his medicine sits on the bathroom counter. I need to remind him to take it.

HIs rumpled, dirty clothes lie in the hamper. He had to be around to wear them.

Ads and bills arrive in the mailbox in his name. He has to be here to open them.

His wallet, keys, and glasses rest on the buffet. He will grab them up on his way out.

Then the stillness returns, dragging reality along. Robert is gone. Physically gone. Gone in all the tangible ways.

He died of a heart attack in the yard. Period.

Reality sticks his foot in the door and won’t budge.

Yet I hear Robert in my ear:

maintain the cars–tend to the oil changes and start them regularly;

be fully present and make the most of every day;

help someone and reach out if you need help;

change the filter in the heat pump when the season changes;

your students rely on you because teaching is your purpose;

check on our friends and welcome them into our home;

take care of our girls for me…

But the girls–daughters, granddaughters, sisters convulse into sobs, the primal moans and language of denial and grief ripping across the house.

I cannot shield them from this agony. We cling together until the wave subsides.

Reality invades.

Even the men–strong, protective, stalwart–cry, which leaves me totally undone.

Yet the memories bring laughter.

Remember when L surprised Papa, but he thought M had a boy in the house?

Did y’all know he and I nearly broke the recliner when we both sat on it?

Oh, yeah! And that night when you-know-who tried to get Robert to dance, and he retreated behind the car?

Or the day he lost the tool he needed, bought another one, and found the original immediately after he finished fixing the car.

So we all laughed and cried and remembered, over and over, until the sharpest pain eased.

But then reality roars back in.

Now it’s harder to hear Robert in my heart’s ear. What would he want me to do? How can I honor him? Will I have the strength to push through?

Reality has nothing to say.

Silence remains.

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We are trudging up a long, steep incline, but this is the Joyous Road, and we will find memories and experiences that restore us.

Please share with me how you traveled through grief and found your way back to joy.

We need each other to lean on sometimes, and a faith in better days ahead.

Thank you all for your sympathy, love, and kindness. It helps.

© 2025 Joyce Martin. All rights reserved

Note: None of my content is AI generated.

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Three Funerals in Three Weeks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

That’s too many. Even if we are on the wrong end of middle-age.

It seems quite frequently we lose another old classmate, friend, or extended family member. But this last round was rough.

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First, my partner lost his brother. 

He’d spent many years disabled after a stroke, but it still hit hard. Doesn’t it always? Yet when someone is expected to pass, we can find some solace in the memories shared with those left behind, the pics of our loved one cradling grandchildren, and the boisterous gathering of all the scattered family. 

The funeral passed in a blur, with my love doing his part as a pallbearer, in spite of still recovering from back surgery. He comforted his sisters in quiet corners at the dinner afterward. Hugs and tears all around. Then everyone dispersed, pulled back into the minutiae of the day-to-day. 

Until the next family funeral.

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A few years ago, I made the agonizing decision to leave a long marriage. 

I did not know where I would land that night. Someone’s couch? A hotel? But Miss Evelyn and her clan took me in and let me rent a property from them in the very small town where I taught. Most of her children, grandchildren, and even some of her great grandchildren knew me from school and events around town, but I had not met the matriarch herself. 

Evelyn took me into her great heart and nurtured me, just as she had her six children and all their offspring and friends young and old. I spent many hours next to her chair as she stroked my hair, and I talked through the hurt and confusion and grief that clouded over me. Sometimes we sat in silence, but genuine caring needs no words. It was then I understood why so many people adored this tiny powerhouse of a woman. 

The small Catholic church overflowed at her service, with every heart a witness to a life well-lived. At the country cemetery out on the prairie, the wind sighed through the old oak trees. Evelyn would fly from here, light and free, every task finished and all duties fulfilled. All is well with my soul. Go in love, Miss Evelyn, go! Catch the capricious breeze and dip up and over the grass and flowers, past the old church and the simmering heat into the depth of the bluest sky. 

We will remain here for a time, but we are well because you loved us so well. 

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Did you hear about Tony? 

My daughter called me on the day after to ask if I knew what had happened. Did my young friend change jobs? Move? That he had driven to the end of the road, literally, and taken his life did not compute. No, that can’t be Tony. I just talked to him not long ago. He’s a teacher, a giver, a musician, a dream weaver. He’s alive!

For several days I simply refused to believe it. I reviewed the last messages from him, looked at pictures of him, remembered our conversations about education, teenagers, travel, and a myriad of other things. Yes, I knew he struggled with depression, but he was climbing out of that. He had hopes of finding his soulmate someday and raising kids of his own. How had I failed him? What did I miss? His brother confirmed the worst.

At the funeral, his mother sobbed in my arms, and I had no comfort to give. I heard the rumbling of the priest’s voice during the funeral mass, offering prayer. I whispered the response, Lord, hear our prayer, but God felt far removed. The suffering of his family lay like a heavy blanket of sorrow over his assembled friends and students. I was an intruder in their grief because my own already engulfed me. I gripped the wet tissue in my hand and held on to a faint faith. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Inwardly, I screamed all the way to the gravesite. It is not right to bury a child before his parents! Has the earth reversed course around the sun, or day turned to night? All is not well in the universe when a young man of promise, who gave so much to others, loses his hope. The pallbearers placed flowers on the coffin, and a child in front of me played with his father’s shoelaces. 

Alleluia. Alleluia.

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© 2024 Joyce Martin. All rights reserved

Note: None of my content is AI generated. Ever.

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You may also find my writing on joyous Road on Substack & Joyce Martin on Medium

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Grandma’s Last Gift

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The valley sloped down in a sweep of color and texture, rich even in mid-winter. The tiny white church rested on the facing hill, just visible through the bare trees. Behind me stood my childhood home, vacant but recognizable.

I could picture myself hurdling down the sidewalk in my wagon and crashing into the yard gate, or sledding down the hill after a good snow. We sheltered in the cellar during storms, and Mother made it a cozy and secure refuge.

This was home. And with me were my two brothers and sister. We all came to be here again because of Grandma. Grandma’s death had brought us all back to Missouri. We had buried her in the cemetery at the end of the valley, and we had lingered to visit the old farm and piece together our past.

Grandma, like many of her generation, grew up poor and hard. She lost her hearing and her mother to scarlet fever at the tender age of 7. When she married, she and Grandpa raised their children in the cradle of the Meramec River Valley in Missouri in the 1930’s. Times were hard, and Grandpa would hire out to work when he could, while they struggled to keep their own farm going.

Their community life centered around the church and school on one side of the valley. Neighbors shared their struggles when in need and bounty when they had it. They knew each others’ faults, many trials, and tiny triumphs. They were a family of common experience, isolated from a changing world by the hills surrounding them.

Grandma was often called out to serve as a nurse, working up her home remedies for those recovering from childbirth, fevers, and countless ailments she had no medical name for. She took pride in her reputation as a healer, but quietly resented her lack of opportunity to become a properly trained nurse. Over her lifetime, she developed an odd collection of superstitions, folklore, herbal acumen, and medical knowledge. We all learned not to mention any symptoms, serious or otherwise, around Grandma unless we were ready for a thorough treatment with one of her mysterious concoctions.

Economic necessity forced the little family to eventually leave the country and move to the big city of St. Louis. Steady work and modernity beckoned. They lived frugally, but they had enough. Later they moved further out to the suburbs. But in all those years away, home always meant returning to the connections and memories of the little valley.

Grandma and Grandpa had 3 children. Grandma outlived her husband and my mother and uncle. She lived a long time, serving as a grandma and neighbor to many. She could be stubborn and superstitious. She had a capricious and mischievous sense of humor. She loved kids because she still wanted to act like one. She was a teller of tales, mostly embellished with each telling, which made them all the more interesting.

She hoarded everything from fabric to old magazines, and canned enough fruit and vegetables for an army division. She knew the old ways of making soap and making do, but she adapted to the new ways too. For a time she drove the winding Missouri roads with a speed and fearlessness that belied her age.

Age and illness finally caught up with her, and in her 90’s she had to be placed in a nursing home. She scarcely recognized even those closest to her and lived within a confusion of past memories and current experiences. We were grateful when she eased out of this life and into another. Grandma would not have wanted to linger in a fog of dementia.

Life is circular. My mother had married a young man from the other side of the county, and they came to live in that same valley that follows the way of the Meramec River. They spent years there, cradling the growth of their young family. I was the youngest of 4 children, and we moved from Missouri when I was 3. My memories of that time are snapshots in my mind, vivid but fleeting and few. The family stories fill out the gaps in my recollection of that time and place.

To stand in the yard of the old farm house with my grown siblings was a moment of exquisite meaning.  It was the closest I have been to the beginning of who I am in this world.

Grandma’s life spanned almost an entire century and touched hundreds of souls.  It gives me hope that we can all live in a way that brings good to the world. Thank you, Grandma, for this last gift.

© 2024 Joyce Martin. All rights reserved

Note: None of my content is AI generated. Ever.

Thank you for reading! Please subscribe below!

You may also find my writing on joyous Road on Substack& Joyce Martin on Medium

You may tip my writing at: https://buymeacoffee.com/joycemartin

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