Grandma Lael

Yesterday, while our family sang in church, as my fingers smoothed the tangles out of my daughter’s hair and my husband whispered the meaning of the elements of communion again to our son, our grandma left her earthly tent and met her inheritance, King Jesus. The earth didn’t shake, I felt no flutter in my spirit, but she left all the same. It’s now the day after and the sun still dared to wake and the grocery store line is as long and grumbling as it has ever been. An entire human, a mother, wife, sister, and grandmother will soon be buried in the ground. Skin once caressed, embraced, adorned, will soon be laid in dirt to return to dust. Of course, the body was always temporary, a makeshift tent, a fragile clay vessel bound to break. The treasure was inside, not out. Yet, how wrong it seems to lower even the shadow of her fullness into the earth. 

The mercy of death is that it begs for reflection. Perspective shifts from self to greater realities and the life of another for at least five full minutes. In this precious space devoid of self-importance, we receive mercy to admit our smallness.

Grandma was one of the first older women I saw the young girl inside of and befriended. Although not my grandmother by blood, I grew to love all her looks, the sassy and the soft. She shared her home and heart with us for two memorable years. Where it would have been easy to judge and dole out advice, inexperienced as my husband and I were in marriage and parenthood, she chose to overlook the immaturity and errors. She cuddled my toddler, ate all the plastic play food piled on her lap, and pretended not to notice the tension as we put up the Christmas tree. She endured my pregnancy craving lunches of salty ramen and sour green apples and my “spicy” cooking at dinnertime. We both gained weight after too many nights of brownies and popcorn and Ninja Warrior. She would hug me tightly after hours spent over the toilet, morning sick and miserable, and I shaved her snow white hair during chemo treatments. Although widowed and often in bodily discomfort, she was a picture of resilience and reliance. Her head rested on an invisible, heavenly shoulder. When her husband left his earthly tent, she didn’t shrink into someone less, but grew more radiant and available to others. 

C.S. Lewis once said,  “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” When I think of Grandma’s life and death, or when I lose myself watching strangers, I remember his reflection on humans, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.” 

I thank God for Lael Boerckel, who was and is an “everlasting splendor”, as Lewis put it so rightly.