Both of my grandmothers passed away within a short amount of time. I remember the funerals themselves vaguely, as I was about Rufus’ age, but the emotions associated with the events remain with me to this day as clearly as hot sunlight passing through crystal glass; fragmented but strong, holding no less intensity than the original stream of light.

My grandmother on my mother’s side was the first to pass away. I was extremely close to her in only the way a young child can come to be; in the perfect, absolute sense of blinding innocence and naivety.

My father loved her, my mother loved her, and so I, too, loved her fiercely; observing only the surface of the surrounding relationships, the love, without seeing the past pains and strains that all family relationships hold locked deep inside their womb; kept safe and warm to grow, but never to escape. Though after she had passed, that sense of love revealed itself to reside in the deepest depth; within the core connections that bind souls together permanently and irreversibly. The roots of who we are made to be over the course of our tragically short life times, like the roots of ancient trees, growing upon each other; weaving intricate webs such as spiders weave, fine and immense, so that all existence is based on an invisible network; hidden, camouflaged, but undeniably felt at the core of one’s being; that’s where love resides. Love for all of mankind; your brothers, your sisters, your mother and father, and yes, for grandmothers too.

My parents were very straight forward with me about the procedures and processes that were taking place. Though I can’t pretend the knowledge penetrated through to achieve true understanding. The days preceding, and up to, the funeral passed with a haze shrouding me from true emotion. The entire family was there, which made me happy, though I was nut supposed to be, surrounded as I was by severe gravity. My mother was sad, which in turn made me sad, but I was also acutely aware, as devastating as it is for a child, that I could do nothing to ease her pain. There was an elephant in the room, barely concealed; a fresh hole; a wound that every one acknowledged, but in their very attempt at acknowledging it it moved further away from acceptance; instead feigning realization to try to fill the hole, which simply can never be healed by words or motions.

“He saw him much more clearly than he had ever seen him before; yet his face looked unreal, as if he had just been shaved by a barber. The whole head was waxen, and the hand, too, was as if perfectly made of wax.” (Agee 714)

The day of the funeral escapes me on a whole basis. Instead I remember disjointed fragments. The church, which I had always embraced as inherently peaceful and comfortable, was suddenly alien and harsh. The abundance of strong, freshly cut flowers originally contradicted death; grotesquely alive and vibrant, though they too had been severed from life and were making one last gasp for beauty; a sacrifice people often overlook.

I stood at the casket, alone with my mother and father. I felt the heavy weight of somberness. My grandmother was resting; sleeping; though she would never wake again. My mother was silent. My father was touching her waxen fingers, then her drawn face.

“She’s not there,” he told me.

He wanted me to touch her, but I was at once appalled and afraid. He wanted me to see, to desperately understand, but it was a lesson a child could never accept.

People say that life is fragile. I will disagree now, something I could never articulate then. Life itself is beautifully strong; resistant to time’s devastating blows; resilient despite the numerous hardships. Life is immense; pulling and pushing both bodies and souls towards an ultimate goal which is ever illusive, never attainable, yet always achieved. Life is not held captive in a single body or soul; is not defined by words, emotions, or behaviors, but is known to all by some uncomprehended hand caressing us, beating us, loving us, and hating us as well. It exists, beautifully and brutally, and in that very existence can never be truly extinguished.

Perhaps that is what my father wished me to know. Simply, life exists not in sleeping hands of the beloved deceased.