Coffee Chat: The Ending

Hello dears. 

I shall offer you coffee.  I've a lovely Gingerbread blend.  I'm not a fan of pumpkin spice...Or rather I am of the spice part but not of the pumpkin part. Well, not in my coffee!  I do like pumpkin just fine in pasta sauce, ravioli filling, pie, muffins, enchiladas...But please don't put it in my drink nor my milk shake or my ice cream.  

 So Gingerbread coffee for me.  However, it is HOT outdoors and if you'd prefer a nice cold drink, just say the word.  I can offer you Lemonade, Iced Water, Iced Tea with Mint, or even a poorly made Cold Coffee.  I say poorly made because I've yet to find the right combination to make a good homemade Iced Coffee.  I suggest you stick with the hot coffee or one of the other cold drinks in my house.  Those are generally good.

Summer is winding down.  Yesterday as I drove home from my appointment, I felt it.  I saw evidence everywhere: the Goldenrod blooming, the roadside grasses, the patchwork of color beginning to show across the River Swamp, the way the sun slants across the yard, the bedraggled looking trees and lawns and flowers, the tinge of gold hitting the Gingko tree at the Women's Club, the branch of yellow stars on the Sweet Gum.  It hit me with a force of grief, though I confess I've watched eagerly up to now for those very signs of a season passing.  The grief is not uncommon to me these days.  The older I grow, the more I feel the sadness of the passing of one season into another.  

I know that this change is inevitable and irreversible.  In the Grand Scheme of God's Good Plan, this is necessary.   Yet I am saddened by it all the same.  Is my grief at this as natural as the seasons themselves?  

When I arrived home, I sat in the car for a moment and looked at everything about me.  Everything looks well-worn just now.  I feel it.  We need this fresh season ahead.  It's evident.  But oh, the sorrow of the passage of time!

Perhaps it wouldn't hit me so hard if the evidence weren't also on the people about me.  Mama has shrunk a foot at least.  My youngest son's beard is shocked through with gray hairs.  John and I are hardly the lovely young folks we were when we met.  Grandchildren are leaping up like young trees.  We are all changing, all of the time.  It's only the outside things that are so very noticeable but inside we are changed as well.  Now my joys are mixed heavily with griefs as I realize that some things will never again be the same.  It's important to point out that the bulk of those which make me sad are all external and not internal nor eternal changes.  

I've spoken often of missing Granny.  I miss Grandmother and Big Mama and Granddaddy C and scores of others as well.  They are gone and won't return to this earth again, which is a blessing for them all.  However, it's Granny I was most deeply attached to at the time she passed.  For years now I've dreamed of her, wandering vaguely about in the dreams, unable to speak much of anything, just there.  It always left me feeling so sad and somehow lonelier than ever for her.  But recently, in my dreams she speaks.  She laughs.  

The other night in my dream, I was in her kitchen, clearing a backlog of stuff that had been hoarded. I came across a pretty enameled tin dish and under the cover inside were the seashells I remember from my childhood.  As I exclaimed with joy over seeing them again, Granny laughed as she used to do when she was highly amused and surprised at once.

In reality those shells are one of my first memories of being at Granny's.  She kept them, not in a pretty enameled dish but in an old metal shortening can and they were under the sink in the kitchen.  I've no idea why she put them there, but I do recall digging them out and marveling over them time after time when I visited and then one day I forgot and when I asked a few visits later, I was told the shells had disappeared.  I remember feeling disappointed but not in a hard way.  Not as hard a disappointment as it is to me now, oddly enough.  So, imagine the joy in my dream when I found the can of shells once more.  It was silly, I know, yet there it was bubbling up in me like an Artesian spring.

In the last few weeks, I've thought of those shells more often than you'd think after 60 odd years.  There were all sorts.  I suppose she'd picked them up when she was in St. Petersburg to visit my uncle before he set sail with the Navy.  I don't know.  She never mentioned going to the beach or spoke of the ocean, except to tell me that the pretty pink Conch would sound like the ocean when held to the ear.  And I suppose it did, but I had nothing to base that upon at the time.  I'd never seen an ocean only mountains.  The other shells were equally as exotic and pretty to my eyes and accounted for hours spent happily laying them out on the floor and admiring each in turn.

It did, however, all come pouring back when Taylor asked for a pretty shell when we went to Florida two or three years ago.  I thought immediately of that pink Conch and the can of shells.  I found her a pretty Conch and told her, as Granny had told me, that if she held it to her ear, she'd hear the ocean...Some things we can pass along even if we don't have the actual article that generated the original memory.  I'd like to think one day perhaps Taylor will have a granddaughter and a pretty pink Conch shell and she too will pass on that little folklore and a memory that came from my childhood.

Taylor is not my only granddaughter as you all know.  There are six all told.  Josie is my first and she's now 21.  It's been years since I've seen her.  The distance between us did not quell her memories of us over the years.  She held on to some feeling for us through the limited time we were able to spend together and a handful of young memories.  When they left Georgia and moved to North Dakota, I knew that I'd likely not see her again.  Now I am not so sure.  Perhaps I will.  But the years between have been lost.

Josie is in a hard place.  She's the mother of two under two at the moment which is quite enough to deal with.  But she's also in an abusive relationship with a manipulative young man who is walking wounded and determined to scar all those around him.  No, I don't know him.  But I've heard from her and others that he is abusive.  Not too long ago, she posted a picture and across her nose was a huge fading bruise.  My heart twisted.  I found myself so angry with her partner that I could happily have horsewhipped him but good and given him a scalding earful of my anger as well.  

And then I found I was angry at Josie, too, for accepting such and thinking that was love.  It isn't her legacy.  It shouldn't be her children's.  I don't know how to help her.  We've offered.  She won't take it.  

I pray. I pray that she will have enough fortitude and be brave enough to leave.  I pray that what I know her legacy to be, a history of strong women, will suddenly stand within her and be a strong woman, too, one who is fiercely able to wrest control of her own life.  I pray that she will not take the years it took me to break a cycle of abuse and lack of self-worth.  I pray she won't waste the years she might have...I pray that he will change, because I cannot pray any other way for him.  

Long ago, out of a spate of anger and frustration and fear, I prayed that someone would die.  I did.  I was a new Christian. I thought my anger righteous, and my way of thinking correct.  But God admonished me hard and said "Who are you to determine fates of lives?  You don't know my plans..." and I was chastised enough to hush and stop those thoughts though my anger remained.  I did stop after that to consider the grief that his family would feel if he were to die.   I was ashamed then and now that because of my anger I was willing to have them hurt in such a way.  

And then one day, through a coincidence that could only have been God generated, I spoke with this man and after the call was ended, I sat and wept and wept and wept.  Because this person with whom I was so very angry all those years confessed the huge amount of physical pain he experienced daily and how hard it was to continue on, told me of his changed heart, then shared with me his great fear that he would die and never see his family again, because they were unsaved.   He asked me to pray in agreement with him that his family would be saved.  His family were people I loved dearly.  All these years, I'd not been praying for him because God wouldn't just wipe him off the face of the earth.  I was still angry you see, even if God had admonished me over my anger. My humility then has only deepened over these years.  I have come to love this man.  Do I agree with him in every matter?  No.  But I'm so grateful that God reminded me His plans are greater than any I could make.  His influence will be far greater in his family than mine ever shall be.

I pray for Josie's partner. God's plan may be far greater than mine.  But if you're of a mind to, pray for Josie and her little family please.  

I was speaking of seasons, wasn't I?  And here I am far off that track because I thought of Granny and every time I think of my own granddaughters.  But I'm going to return to seasons. 

 In the past week, I've been out of house alone no less than four times.  All by myself.  I don't know what to make of me!  I wondered if we were easing into a new season of life.   It's not just us.  Katie, too, seems to be in a different place than before.   Caleb is growing and changing.  The children are different than before, the grandchildren, too.

As I was driving home, wondering at myself, I felt sadness over the changes I believe are ahead.  And yet, I feel, as I feel about Autumn's approach and Summer's ending that this is a natural and normal change.  I can't speak for how long lasting any of these personal life changes will be, but I feel change all about me.  It's an odd sensation after hoping, praying, wishing, begging for a new season to be upon us in this household for so long.  Things only seemed to continually escalate into the next crisis for years now, but suddenly...

Well, it's never suddenly, is it?  It's a process and the steps of the process are as unknown as the reasons that process is necessary.  It's tedious and hard and difficult and just as we settle into acceptance, it all begins to change into something different once again.  

It's been just so all my life long, one transition after another coming when hope is nearly done and then the end appears to be near and that new season arriving creates in me the very same sadness/joy that I feel at the end of each natural season.  Perhaps they are all natural, when it comes to that.  Emotions, life, nature. 

Will I feel so standing at the gates of heaven?  Will I look behind at life and think how sweet and beautiful it was in so many places and feel sadness that it's behind me?  Will I look ahead at smiling faces standing in the gates waiting for my arrival and experience deep joy for all that is ahead?  That's how I feel just now.  Caught in that moment in between, wondering at the mixture of emotions flooding through me.  Looking forward and yet, not quite there.  Looking back and seeing it all at a distance.  No wonder it is so often referred to as The Great Unknown!

What is a given at this moment is that in one week, Autumn will be here.  It will be the present, not something in my future.  And my mixture of emotions will settle solidly into joy for the season I love most of all.  Just as I'm sure that one day, I will walk through those heavenly gates and joy will be complete.

Changes always generate the same feeling in me just now.  I want to be comforted.  For this season, the natural one, I want comfort from hearty slow cooking foods and cool air spiced with the scent of dying leaves and grass.  I want to snuggle under an old cotton quilt and when that is no longer enough to keep the chill at bay, to snuggle deeper into John's arms and gather in his warmth, too.  I want to wrap myself in a sweater and take coffee on the porch wrapped in a blanket.  I want to see the beauty expanded into a colorful array, just as the verdant beauty of the fields and forests were so refreshing after the budding spring was over and done.   I want to put my feet into fuzzy slippers and point them towards the flame of the little heater.  I want to be Cozy.  That is Caleb's favorite word to use when he's nesting down in a pile of blankets and pillows. "I'm cozy," he'll say.  He's been saying it now for two years.  Coziness. I've always been amused that someone so very young could have such a complete concept of what cozy means.  The very sound of the word is full of comfort, isn't it?

But I was not cozy this morning. No, nor yesterday morning either.  I was hot.  And sweaty and icky and irritated with the heat.  I was mad at the gnats buzzing incessantly in my ear and my eyes ached from the salty sweat that poured off my forehead.  Cool showers, iced drinks, light food...That's all I want in this last week of summer.  

As for that season of change in our personal lives that I feel is looming imminently before us, I seek my comfort in other ways.  I am making time to enjoy every moment I can with every person in my life.  I'm trying to be very mindful of the fleeting nature of life itself and seek out the real things, not the things that are mundane and will rob us of future memories.  People are more important than housework or mealtimes.  Though people can be rather irritable if those things are ignored as I know too well!  I've said a hundred times and will say it a hundred more, the world may be end, but someone will want a meal, or a clean shirt, or a tidy spot to rest.  And that's just facts.  The balance is to find the right proportion and not allow the doing part to make us lose sight of the lasting parts.

Hugs to you all...

With Love,

Terri