Lucky Number 14 and a Love Story
When I was eleven my family dog died on the 14th of October.
When I was 12 I got my first period on the 14th of March. (Sorry if that's too much info but it's a big day in the life of a young girl!)
When I was 14 years old I got my first boyfriend...a few months later on October 14th I got my first grown up passionate kiss...(apparently I was not a very good kisser back then.)
I started dating my high school sweetheart (the best friend of the guy that let it slip that my kiss in the clubhouse was less than perfect) January 14th the following year.
One of the best days of my early adult (late teen) life was Feb. 14th 1993. It was an outstanding day...events of the day shall remain unshared...
My first son was born November 14th 1997. Fourteen years later on November 14th 2011, I was discharged from the hospital after giving birth to my second son.
I now have two beautiful boys that came into the world during a November full moon.
The last time I saw my dog James alive he was 14 years old.
Last year on May 14th, my husband (who was my fiance at the time), announced in his own unique way that he was in with both feet...end of story.
There are 14 years separating my first and second marriage.
My grandfather, one of the most influential people in my life was born in 1914. The other, my grandmother was born January 14th the following year.
The last time I went to visit my grandmother when she was still able to have a conversation with me, she was at the Greater Niagara General Hospital in room 1414. She passed away 2 days after that.
The following is more of my "Flying Fish" idea that I began writing in 2009, a year after grandma had passed away. Today is her birthday and I could think of no better way to remember her than to put on the pretty purple amethyst necklace she left me and dig up my old notes to share with you.
She is a woman that has caused me to engage in a great deal of thinking and consideration. After she passed I really struggled with life meaning, purpose and with how I was spending my time on earth. In comparing myself to her, I felt woefully inadequate. Finding purpose and making meaning have become the central theme in my life since then. So here is my, "Happy Birthday Song" to the most inspirational flying fish I know.
How can we develop a story that we are excited to participate in and proud to leave as a legacy to our children? The time when this question comes most often to the center stage of awareness is during the process of mourning we experience after the death of someone we love. Here is a time when we gather together as a family and community with the purpose of sharing the memories and stories of experiences that involved the one that has gone home.
This past summer, my 92 year old grandmother Audrey decided to use her return ticket and fly back to the one that had co-authored her story. It was and continues to be a difficult time for our family for many reasons. We knew how blessed we were that she was able to participate in our own stories for so long as one of the central figures that helped us to develop a way to see and interpret our lives. We knew how lucky we were to have such a strong, yet beautifully patient and tender matriarch. We also knew that she held our family together in a very fundamental way that could not be replaced. Her passing although we recognized it as celebration, was also a time of loss, and one that threw story in our face and forced us to take notice of what we were choosing to do with the time we had while we were here.
She had nearly 100 years on this earth. The stories that came from her life played out in the lives of the people that had gathered to celebrate her and mourn her passing. People crowded the tiny Community of Christ church in Niagara Falls where she was once a pastor’s wife and we spent more than 2 hours listening to people speak about their own stories and how Audrey had been a character that had impacted them.
We celebrated the seasons of her life beginning with the spring of her childhood and cycling into the unnamed season she had now transitioned into. People loved her. People held her in a special place of significance as one who had provided them with comfort, strength, laughter, and one who had shared defining moments with them.
The greatest story of inspiration however, that was shared by people again and again was not one where Grandma was a supporting character. This was not another example of how she participated in our lives, but instead it was the central theme of her own life identified by those who knew her best. Her story was a legacy of love for all people but especially for my grandfather Arnold.
People shared how moved they were by this husband and wife relationship. It gave us hope in a cynical time and became a witness to the idea that sometimes there really are two people that are meant to spend their lives together. My grandmother’s nephew Randy said it best, “If there really are such things as soul-mates, Audrey and Arnold were that. I never knew two people that loved each other more.”
They were two peas in a pod, great lovers that created a love that awed others by its truly astounding faithfulness, friendship and passion. This was her great story. Hers was a love story that spoke directly to our hearts and experience in a way that was both inspiring and intimidating.
It was inspiring because she was proof that love was stronger than death. She still found my grandfather all around her even though cancer had taken him 17 years earlier. She would find pennies (from heaven) on the street and hold on to them, creating a belief that this was a sign that Grandpa was still caring for her and walking in this life beside her. She had taken the grief that had ravaged her body and reduced her once medium frame to a tiny 97lbs, and transformed it into life affirming music that not only gave her back her strength physically, but created an incredible light that shone with her every word, expression and excited declaration.
She sang to us her pleasure with life as she tasted something delicious, welcomed a visitor into her home, or opened a gift from a grandchild or great- grandchild. Her melodic coos and “ooos and ahhhs” will live long in the memories of all that knew her. So too will her love of new experiences and the demonstration of joy that comes with experiencing the world magically.
She lived life and enjoyed it enough for two people. She showed us that when our five senses combine with imagination and intuition, we are given the gift of an everyday experience that becomes transformed into the divine, both beautiful and original. As Grandma would say as she took a small bite of the homemade custard made special for her by the neighbor, “It’s just heavenly!” And that’s how she encouraged others to experience the world… a heaven coexisting on earth. Hers was a presence that became impossible to overlook.
How was such a transformation possible after such devastating loss of a lover and life mate? After decades of not playing piano, she returned back to the instrument to master a full CD’s worth of music that my grandfather, who was her piano teacher in the days of her youth, had introduced her to. His other love after Audrey was music. Audrey honored him and their love by transforming her grief into something that affirmed the love she had and the experience of her lover’s presence, a connection that she continued to feel deeply.
With that dedication to practice, creation and mastery of the music, she taught us all how to hold fast and believe in life through all things. Nothing was strong enough or final enough, not even death, to separate her from her dearest companion in this life. The bird and the fish had still managed to build a home together.
It was intimidating because of the sheer power and force of it. Here we were, listening and recognizing this incredible love story while most of us struggle intensely day to day with intimate relationships and issues regarding “romantic” love. It caused us to pause and re-evaluate ourselves, our needs, our wants and how we tended to our closest relationships. It was clear that this love story was not just about a wife and a husband that were committed to “getting through it” together, this was a union of two souls that created a presence, or a “we” that was unstoppable.
They were a super-team; the entity of their relationship was more powerful in and of itself than either of the individual participants. It superseded anything plainly earth bound by social law and custom with a spiritual union that was held sacred to each partner and recognized as something distinctly, “greater than” by the community of people that knew them.
My grandmother was a housewife. She was the mother of 3 children, grandmother of 6, and great grandmother to more children than she would know. She was a political activist, community service volunteer, church member, sister, wife, teacher and dear friend. All of these roles seemed simple to her during her life. She wasn’t sure “what she had ever done”.
She participated with humility in many stories in a caring and compassionate way, not realizing that her own story was the most moving and inspiring of all. The thing which was most natural for her to do was to participate in loving another. The simplicity of her story was so natural and normal in fact, that it was beyond her ability to see it as something profound. She suspected it was special, and would comment on how lucky she was when she looked around her and saw others with a different experience. But she would casually articulate that she was just “little old me” and not especially unique or different.
What she taught us was that our natural tendencies and gifts shine far more brilliantly than anything that we could force our way through. Her greatest gift was simply the nature with which she approached life. She didn’t need to go out and conquer the world or make a million dollars.
When our authentic nature shines forth, we often don’t recognize it. How can a fish explain water? (My grandmother by the way, was quite proud of her two webbed toes..she would show us at least once a summer and talk about how she must have come from mermaids. )
How can a bird describe a process as natural as flying? Her love story was unique to her. It was her story and was so true to her soul that her conscious mind overlooked it. Not all stories need huge adventures, special effects and treks across the globe. Sometimes the most powerful stories are created when we live our lives authentically.
Not all of us has a love story like Grandma’s. This is not because we aren’t worthy of it, but because that’s not the story that we chose to write this time, and because it is not the story that would include us in a way that would be most beneficial to the rest of humanity during this time period.
We have a different story that will move and impact people in a different way. The world needs great love stories, but it also needs adventure stories, stories of overcoming difficulty, stories of persistence and patience, and stories of leaders that change the world. No story is more or less important; they are all needed, and unique.
Understanding what your story is, or what your theme is this time around can be difficult. Like my mermaid of a grandmother, we never fully realize that our story is indeed beautiful and has great potential to make a tremendous difference in the lives of many. Our story lives on long after we hang up our hats and take the last train back to our maker. The impact of those stories will continue to live on in the people that were helped or hurt, inspired or marginalized, empowered or discouraged by them.
You hold the stories inside you of people that you do not know, and have never met. Your ideas and opinions, and in fact the very way you process your own experience in this life are influenced by the ideas, opinions, and behaviors of people that came generations before you arrived.
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