Wednesday, 01 July 2009

• Currently 84, Charing Cross Road By Helene Hanff see related

  "This is for Cameron's Grandpa..."

  On Monday, we started a new unit in my preschool class: "Let's Move!"  We have been talking about muscles, exercise, etc. and I gave the children (4 to 5 years old) art supplies and told them to draw themselves doing some kind of physical activity. After a few moments, I began to ask them about their art. When I got to the last girl at the table, she turned her drawing around to show it to me. "Tell me about your picture, " I prompted her. "Oh, she said, "this is for Cameron's Grandpa, because Cameron's Grandma died."

  Is that the sweetest thing? How compassionate is she, for being four years old?!

  I was so touched.

  As much as I miss my friend Brenda who died this past spring, missing my mother-in-law is far worse. It is the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of as I fall asleep. I see things all the time that I want to tell her about or ask her about, and with every book I read, I feel the gap, because we often discussed what we were reading and made suggestions or swapped books. In fact, the last thing she gave to me was a book I had already read and loved, but did not own: 84 Charring Cross Road. She said, "I read this and I knew you would love it." Well, of course she was right- I already loved it; it had just never come up before in our book talks. But this is just one example of what I mean: everything is less without her now. She is missing in my life more now than in porportion to the frequency with which we actually talked in person: it's the realization that she is completely gone, not just on a trip and therefore hard to reach, not just busy with a volunteer effort and therefore not home right now, etc. etc:

   It's not just that I cnanot talk to her. It's that I can not talk to her tomorrow either, nor the next day, nor the next. Does that make sense? Except, I do talk to her: I hope she can hear me up there (yes, I believe in heaven), and I whisper things up, hoping that she can hear them.

  I know she loved life, and loved us, and would want us to mourn in a healthy way, but also continue to love our own lives. I know she would want us to be happy and enjoy our days. It's just this gnawing sense that the whole of our life is less now, that the goodness she spread has diminished, that the kindness she showed in her actions and speech is absent, and missed.

  Seriously: everything is less without her here.

  But I am sending the drawing to my father-in-law, because: wow. How many four year old children would come up with that on their own? What a sweetheart.

   

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