For Manda

I knew the phone call was coming.  I figured it was only going to be a matter of days.  It didn't matter I was expecting it, the news gave me a numbing shock and filled me with a sense of grief anyway. 

For as long as I can remember my grandma has been a picture of good health.  Over 80 and she could still drive to the store, she'd spot loose change better than a metal detector (earning her the nick-name eagle eyes), she'd put on blue grass and dance around the house and she'd still flirt with cute guys.  I guess the best way to describe her would be to say she was "forever young".  Then a couple months ago she got sick.  At first we were optimistic.  "Why worry," she said, "that will just cause me to get an ulcer."  That was the kind of person she was.  Then things went downhill quickly and one day I got the call that she was gone. 

Now mentally, rationally, I knew what was going to happen.  But emotionally I wasn't ready, I wasn't expecting it- this caught me out of left field.  It's like Charlie Brown kicking a football.  He knows Lucy is going to pull it away and he's going to fall on his backside but he's still suprised it happened anyway.  I guess no matter how hard I try to keep connected to what is going on back home I'm always going to be out of things.  Its like I know these things are going on but I'm not connected to them in any way.  The best way to describe it is it's like reading a survivor's account from some catastrophe.  You read the words and understand them, heck if they are a good writer maybe you have some sort of emotional response to what they have to say, but at the end of the day you aren't connected to those events and you can't truly relate to them.  Even though it may have happened, it didn't happen to you so its not completely real, its just another story. 

This might seem a little harsh or inhuman but this is the reality of my situation.  Right now I can't think of my grandma being gone.  The reality doesn't exist for me because it hasn't happened to me.  I'm sure once I'm back home and I can't find her then it will really hit me.

It was real for me when my mom called and told me.  I couldn't stop crying.  I made myself pull it together long enough to tie up some work stuff.  I managed to just barely keep myself from outright bawling till I got to the church.  Then I asked Tabita, the preacher's wife, for the key.  I needed to be someplace quiet and calm and I didn't want to be at home feeling isolated . . . so church was my next best option.  Sometimes I feel better just being in church.  Call it God or the Holy Spirit or my mind playing tricks on me.  The point is I sometimes get a sense of calm, like everything is going to be ok, when I'm in church.  I needed that.  So I went to pray.

Now Tabita is a naturally curious person.  Most of our conversations involve her questioning me about the best way to keep her children healthy or life in America.  Given my lackluster church attendance today she was curious about why I wanted to get into the church.  She was excited because she thought it was some sort of special day in America that all the Americans went to church to pray. 

I tried to explain in Bambara what had happened.  All I could say was my grandmother and then my voice broke and I broke down crying.  I couldn't say it in Bambara, I couldn't say it.  The word I know for saying someone is dead in that language is an ugly word.  For that matter I find the french equivalent equally ugly.  And the only pantomime I know for dying seems crude and vulgar.  None of these has the comforting sound like you get in english.  Saying my grandmother has passed away.  Passed away.  She's not gone, she's just passed on to another place, another phase.  It lacks the finality of other words and phrases and comforts with the thought that things aren't over.

So here I am choaking out the words I dont want to say, crying and Tabita laughs.  Whether at me and my sad state or at one of her children running around I can't say, but it makes me feel worse.  So I numbly walk away and into the church.  I open a window, shoo away the kids who want to watch the crazy white lady, and go sit in the back row where I can lean against the wall.

What happened was between me and the man upstairs but I left after an hour without finding peace.  I stopped at the gate to tell Tabita I was leaving and that I couldn't get the key out of the lock.  She stopped me and asked, "she was old right?  You said she was like 80."
"yeah"
"Hey, she had a very long life!! What about your grandfather?"
"He's already dead"
"Well see now she's with him."
"They were Christian right?  Not muslim?"
"No my family is Christian," I answered.
"Well then there is no problem.  If they were Christian, now they are with God," she kept motioning towards the sky.

At least I'm fairly certain this is the conversation we had given my poor use of the language.  But some how her admonishing me that didn't I read my Bible and didn't I know that everything was fine actually made me feel better.

Post Script
I just went back home and while I didnt feel like I'd been hit by a brick wall I did feel a sense that something was left undone.  Even if Manda wasn't there I felt like she should have been.  Her absence struck me the most when I went to her house.  It felt wrong being there without her, almost like a violation of privacy.  One of my last days I impulsively drove to the cemetery.  I had no emotional response to being at the graveside and then I saw a pinwheel in the flower arrangement.  They were the same flowers she had put out for my grandfather last fall.  Seeing that which was so quintessentially her made me happy for the person she was and sad that she is no longer here.
IN LOVING MEMORY