Life Well Lived

I have just outlived my grandma.

She was a few days younger than I when she tragically died from an infection in the lining of her heart. Probably, a round of antibiotics would have cured her without a second thought. But this was before antibiotics. It was thirty years before I was even born. My mother was five. Instead, my grandmother spent a couple of years getting weaker and aging horrifically. In the last picture taken of her, she looks to be eighty--more than thirty years older than she really was.

Lying alone in a bedroom, she worsened and died, leaving eight children.

I realized a little while ago that she would have been surprised to be thought of as "Grandma." She wasn't anyone's grandma in her lifetime. (Neither am I yet.) None of her children was married. She had two grown daughters, ages 24 and 22, still living at home; a son, just turned 20, who was kicking around the idea of going on a church mission--mostly kicking it away, I think, until his mother actually died and he decided to do as she wished; another son who was almost 16; a daughter at the tricky age of thirteen-and-a-half; an eleven-year-old boy who would grow up to be tops in the field of endocrinology; and two little girls, eight and five.

She was just Lizzie, named Elizabeth for both of her pioneer grandmothers--one a black-silk-wearing elegant lady in a tragic marriage and the other a generous down-to-earth woman who had also been cut down early by poor health.

Really, given her short life span, I expected to outlive my grandmother, and I'm awfully glad that I have, given that I still have a passel of children to raise, as well.

I often wonder what she thought of as those months of illness encroached on and overcame her. I hope she was able to hang around, unseen, to continue to love and guide her young ones. I hope they could feel her love, sense her near, take comfort. But there is so little to know about that.

Only a two handfuls of photographs were taken of Lizzie in her lifetime. Her wedding portrait, 103 years old, hangs in my bedroom. In this, as in most of her other photographs, her gaze is steady, her expression somewhat serious. She does not look dour or stern. She is just being herself, not saying cheese for the camera. My mother always told me that I have her gray eyes, but when I look at the eyes in her photographs, I can't read them.

I wish I had known her. I wish I could read her expression, know what she thought, or thinks. Never knowing one's maternal grandmother is not usually any kind of a blessing (a near-curse that most of my own children share).

My own mother only knew her as a small child can know a parent--as a nurturer, a soft blankie, giver of food and hander-down of rules. My own five-year-old could hardly write an essay on my personality, thoughts, and experiences, I'm sure.

It seems that the things I know about my grandmother, Elizabeth, are things to admire--and traits I unfortunately do not share. She won prizes for her gardens, while plants coming under my care have been handed an undeserved death sentence. She shared such a close bond with her husband that the one time they mildly disagreed, my mother was shocked. I love my husband, but we have disagreed more than once. She was tall and trim. I am short and lost my waist the second I conceived my first child. Her children were unfailingly polite and loyal to each other. Mine boss and police each other. She wore long dresses every day of her life. I am in my nightgown by the time I've been home 90 seconds. She was an excellent seamstress and cook. I haven't had access to a sewing machine until my last birthday, and my husband likes to do almost all the cooking. Her small house was always clean. My children toss their empty cups onto the floor. At least, my baby does. She was ever industrious, raising her large family, tending her large yard, and helping with her small farm. I am often lazy and can't even imagine dealing with chickens.

My only hope is that I am comparing her best to my worst. I have heard that she was unfailingly faithful, and stuck to her beliefs and principles despite the worst trials. I try to be like that. She has also been described as "a progressive woman" who drove a car when most women didn't and would go around the neighborhood picking up other women to take them to meetings. I would like to think I got a little of that from her, too.

But I am painfully aware that outliving her is a small accomplishment--done by default, mainly. She easily "outlived" me in many areas. What is the length of a life compared to the depth and breadth of it? Though she left her children motherless at vulnerable ages, she achieved remarkable success with them. Each grew to be a great, good person, a hard worker, a valuable contributor to society. She left a legacy of faith, honor, diligence, and production that I cannot match.

So this is my work: to live for the time I have left as well and as importantly as she did. To cultivate the kind of work ethic, kindness, beauty, truth, family success, and grit that live on in her long absence from the world, because what I can hold over her is nothing compared to what she holds over me.