Here If You Need Me
a true story by Kate Braestrup
I picked up mom and headed off to town for Friday morning errands. Among other things on my to-do list, I wanted to pick up the book that I had been notified was waiting for me. Thanks to the library loan program less than a week would go by since first reading it's introduction and the time it would take to arrive at the Bangor Public library from the University of Maine Augusta library. From The Manharts blog:
Here if You Need Me: My favorite of the non-fiction. A story of a woman who went to seminary after her husband was tragically killed and then became the chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. For a spiritually searching girl like me, it was perfect. I am consciously stopping myself here from going on and on and on and on. Her voice is one the bravest, clearest, and (sometimes) funniest I've read in a while. I HIGHLY recommend it.
Shared by a friend Stephani now calls Emilie, but stubbornly remains Mrs in my mind. The wonderfully giving Creative writing/English teacher that helped my then 16 year old daughter through some very rough early high school daze.
I'm not sure why this book from a summer reading list jumped out at me as the one I would most like to read. For the last 7 years I have tended towards the "scary and alarming" government tell-all books our current administration has spawned with all too frequent necessity. Change can't come soon enough and I pray for our country's soul. Literally prayed on several occasions now. Even though I consider myself Spiritual rather than Religious.
On the way home from mornings errands, and having read a few pages in waiting, I questioned once again if praying for a presidential choice was proper use of spiritual aids. This time out loud and in front of mom as I was about to drop her off at home with her groceries & medications.
We discussed the Palin Effect and wondered if our gender would be so foolish as to vote this option simply because she would be woman. Not a woman who stands for nearly anything in this world I want for my daughters. Their future choices are their own.
Mom allowed that in these times, perhaps more than ever, a little prayer couldn't hurt. May in fact be needed.
I began reading after lunch with dedicated determination. On the deck in the warmth of a sunny afternoon. My eyes teared up almost from the beginning and at one point I put it down, wondering. Will this be too sad?
Another time it was put down to call the fire department. Is that smoke I smell again! A really bad fire was burning in Hermon and thankfully not a repeat of earlier this summer. Our local fire department volunteer drove around the block to check. Just to be sure.
The last page was turned at about 4 am.
I read About the Author. Again.
And closed the book.
And then lay my head in my arms on the kitchen table and sobbed a few of the tears that had been building within me through out the reading.
It is an amazing book. Come to me at perhaps the perfect time.
Searching for answers. Not always sure of the question.
In the 25 years without my sister I can usually tell when I'm in for a good cry. It builds up as if the tears are in my head and my heart and they will surely soon burst out for the cleansing of my spirit I've come to accept as good for me. I thought I might make it to the cemetery before the flood. But it was not to be.Go ahead. Arrange and rearrange the stones on your beloved's grave. Keep arranging those stones for as long as it hurts to do it, then stop, just before you really want to.
Put the last stone on and walk away.
Then light your candles for the living. Say your prayers for the living. Give your flowers to the living. Leave the stones where they are, but take your heart with you. Your heart is not a stone.
Thank you, Emilie.
My sister is Nola
I started the morning with a cup of coffee and my morning read of daily blogs.
A Modest Proposal for the 4th: Take back Old Glory caught my eye first. (quoted in part below)
The porch flag that went up on Sept 12th belonged to my father-in-law and came home with us when we cleaned out his house after his passing on Memorial Day 1998. He was a 20 year Navy man and it seemed like a good way to honor him, as well as our country during a time of our national sorrow.
It came down in shame the day our leaders declared war on a country that had nothing to do with Sept. 11th.
I've been thinking of having a second flag raising ceremony when our next president takes office. A new beginning. (Which ever one it is, I HOPE they bring change.) Being a proud American doesn't mean we get to put on rose coloured glasses and think our leaders can do no wrong.
But perhaps it was wrong to give up our flag to those who would spit the word liberal at us like it was a four letter word and call us unpatriotic for not going along.
Barack Obama, who earlier took some flack for his empty lapel, is on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone with flag pin gleaming. We should follow his lead. Everyone who's voting for Obama -- and especially those who are public figures (i.e. Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty, Rachel Maddow) must immediately procure a flag pin and not be seen without it before November 5th. If you can't do it with pride, do it as an act of subversion.
And I like the idea of solidarity & a flag pin.
An act of subversion, starting now!
Next stop on my morning blog rounds was MOMocrats. :)
Then my heart soared for moment when I visited Steph's blog and saw how well she represents. I asked her to return the repaired angel to my sister's gravestone. I didn't have the heart for a visit to the cemetery on the 3rd. I got through the day with no tears and a just a little wistfulness of things that could have been. A little sewing combined with a bookmaking project I'll blog about on another day.
This morning is the anniversary of the day I told Dad and Mom about Nola's death.
That fast. There were tears. As fast as the flashback of a memory of daddy's embrace as I told them she was dead.
Sobbing. The gut wrenching kind saved for 4 in the morning when no consoling is needed. It's just the healing my soul needs to get through another year without my sister.
Happy birthday, Daddy.
Her memory will see you through this day too.
Nola Jean Grant
May 16, 1960 - July 3, 1983
Today my sister would be 46; next week I'll turn 47. For 5 days we were the same age (a lot alike) for complete opposites. She was the laughter. The free spirit. Often the leader finding some form of trouble for all of us to get into - a neighborhood full of kids; lots of cousins. It usually seemed like a good idea at the time. She was the one we sent to "ask mom" for something; if it was the only hope. Encouraged with "Mom will say yes to you; cry if you have to!" often she went to get us the response hoped for. She had a temper. She was no angel.
At 3 our tricycles were hung up in the rafters of the spare room. Out of reach for a month. To this day I'll swear it was all her fault! She bit my face. Little angry teeth marks covered my entire cheek; because I took MY bike back. The one with NO missing shiny hubcap. I saw a tricycle on the side of the road yesterday, waiting for trash day. I almost rescued it.
Nola was a unit secretary at Eastern Maine Medical Center; on the fourth floor - where cancer often ended the lives of strangers she grew to love; in a very short time. And their passing would break her heart. Until another needed her smile. Her cheer. And their smile back was the thing that made returning to work where people died. Nearly everyday. Bearable.
Our Guardian Angel watches over us. Her name is Nola.
Nola died at 23.
Five minutes from home. Five minutes from a picnic area on a sunny afternoon. Her boyfriend Lance and our cousin Dwight were in the back seat; his wife Sylvia was driving and baby Faith Ann & Nola were in front.
She volunteered to work on that July fourth weekend so co-workers with children could have the day off. A quick outing after work.
Best Friends together.
Today Dwight remains in a wheelchair. From that day to this.
Sylvia has remarried.
Nola's Annie has a family of her own now.
Witnesses said afterwards the 19 year old was passing everything in sight. The state trooper put William Haney Jr.'s drivers license in my hand the next day. It was said he had been partying, woke up to discover he was late for a job at KFC; so he drove fast. And recklessly. Hitting them nearly head on. Less than five minutes from home.
I was home with our new baby Sara, born March 18, 1983. Tom had gone fishing for the afternoon and had actually driven past the accident scene, not knowing it was someone he knew. Someone I loved. On July 3rd all of the newness & wonder of having a brand new baby was smashed by grief. Sorrow. Despair. ANGER. Loss. I can still hear a wailing scream in my head when I remember being told the news.
We couldn't find mom and dad. To tell them this awful thing. They'd gone for a ride, met up with friends with an extra bed in their camper and stayed overnight. An impulse drive in the opposite direction we thought they might have gone. An all-points bulletin by the police failed to find them. The vigil began. Waiting in a little trailer next door for mom and dad to come home.I can still hear the scream in my head when I remember telling daddy on his birthday.
They could tell something was wrong. Something was bad. No, Grammie Grant was okay. So much worse. I don't know how parents get through something like this. I've only experienced it as a sister. Dad took up golf because his older brother recognized he needed something to save his soul. I think it helped. He still plays.
Mom. Today is hardest probably on her. I couldn't bring myself to pick up the phone today. I stopped in yesterday but she wasn't home. I'll call tomorrow. How can another year slip away?
One of the last pictures I have of Nola is of her holding Sara. I knew what LOVE looked like the first time I saw Sara's Aunt Nola hold her. Look upon baby Sara with love. And I knew what Love (and that look) felt like the first time I held our brother Kevin's baby Kyle.
With sadness and some guilt I know that everything new, every first for our 2 daughters has been measured by me, at least for a moment, by the absence of Nola. Whenever there's a moment of uncertainty at how long it's been without my sister, I remember it can be measured by the number of birthday candles on Sara's cake. Stephani Nola is enough like her namesake to be a little frightening. Laughter and free spirit. And NO angel!
But I have to believe one watches over them.
