The funeral home asked for some pictures to enlarge for the funeral, so I go to Grammy’s house and get her boxes of photos and picture albums. I guess they’re mine now.
I look around at all her stuff and wonder how I’m going to sort through eighty years of possessions. There’s so much of her here. I missed so much of her life, and I won’t recognize most of it.
I’ll have to figure that out later.
Back home, I spread the pictures out on my dining room table and page through the albums. There are faded black-and-white photos of Grammy when she was a young woman. I turn to a page where she’s holding a baby dressed in a frilly lace dress, all in white, with a sweet little bonnet. I look more closely and realize it’s my mom.
She’s laughing, and her bottom two teeth are showing. Grammy is grinning with pride.
I go from picture to picture, watching my mother grow up and Grammy grow older. Why have I never seen these before?
I pull out a few of the pictures and set them aside on the table. Soon I have so many that I know I’ll have to do a PowerPoint slide show so the few mourners at the funeral can see her.
Grammy’s smile is even broader in the pictures where she’s holding me as a baby. It feels self-indulgent to pull all of those out for the PowerPoint. But this is the life I had before my first memories. The life I lost when my mother died and my father was left alone with me. Somehow these photos comfort me.
Then I realize Grammy never showed me these because I so rarely sat down with her. I was always in triage mode, seeing to her needs, but not spending time with her. Not listening. Not seeing.
I miss her voice, and her embarrassing proclamations, and her way of thinking. I miss her wrinkled face and her soft touch. She was so proud of me. No matter how often I thought I’d let her down, I could do no wrong in her eyes.
I turn from the pictures and go to my back window, looking out on my yard. It was beautiful when I bought the house, with rosebushes and a little fishpond. I have a guy who mows and weeds, but I haven’t walked out there in months. What a waste.
I step out onto the patio now. The Adirondack chair I bought with the house is covered with old pollen, but I drop into it anyway and look up to the dusky sky.
“I’m so sorry I missed all that,” I whisper. “I missed everything she said. Everything she showed me. I want to honor her now, even though it’s too late. I want to do what I should have done before.”
I can’t believe I’m talking to God again, whom I’ve rarely talked to before. But Grammy prayed as if God was sitting right beside her, as if there was no difference between that and any other kind of conversation. And as I attempt the same thing, I can tell that God takes notice.
A while later, Finn stops by to bring food as I’m trying to figure out what to wear to the funeral.
“Would you give me your opinion on something?” I ask him. “I have to decide what to wear tomorrow.”
“Sure. Do I get a fashion show?”
“No, but I’ll bring the outfits out here.” I run into the bedroom and grab my choices, realizing I have way too much black in my wardrobe. I take them to the living room and lay them over the back of the couch. I pick up the first one—a business suit with a short jacket and a midcalf skirt.
“Nope,” he says. “Next.”
I gape at him, surprised. “Really? I thought you would be one of those guys who pretends to like everything.”
“Have you met me?”
I laugh. “Okay, what about this one? It has a longer jacket, and it has some blue in it.”
“Next.”
“Wow. Okay, this one?”
“Don’t you have anything other than suits? Just regular dresses?”
“I mostly buy suits for work.”
He drops into the easy chair next to the couch. “That’s what gets me. Why do women in professional positions like yours have to dress in suits?”
“Because we have to try harder.”
“You don’t. I bet you’re a great lawyer.”
I sigh. “It’s just the way it’s done. We wear jackets. Heels. We have to look professional.”
“So that explains the opiate epidemic. Women who have to clomp around in heels. The men don’t wear heels. Why do women have to?”
I can’t believe Finn is making me have this conversation. “Because it looks more dressy. But you know, I’ve always thought that a man must have invented high heels. No one who had to wear those things would ever inflict that on the rest of her gender.”
“Then stop wearing them.”
“But they’re cuter than flats.”
“Oh, so you do want to look cute? Not like a man?”
“In some ways, yes.”
“Sydney, you have the market cornered on cute. You don’t need to walk on stilettos.”
I’m touched, but I pretend I didn’t hear it. “So I’ll wear lower heels to the funeral. But seriously, you don’t like any of these outfits?”
“No.”
Sighing, I stack them up and carry them back to my room, and go through my closet to pull out the few real dresses I have. I take them out and find Finn in the kitchen checking the food in my fridge. “These aren’t black. I don’t know if I can wear any of them.”
“Why should you wear black?”
“Because I’m sad.”
“But Callie is happy, right? She’s celebrating. Walking and running and working the crowd. I bet she’s wearing color.”
“I think she’s probably wearing one of those white robes we read about in her Bible.”
“So wear white.”
“Are you crazy? You don’t wear white to a funeral.”
He leans toward me across the kitchen island. “You may have noticed this about me, but I’m not big on style.”
“I know,” I say. “You want me to be comfortable. But I can’t wear a T-shirt and yoga pants.”
He comes back into the living room and looks at the choices, considering them more carefully. “This one,” he says. “I like the purple.”
I incline my head and consider it. It’s a dark purple, not bright, so maybe it would be appropriate enough. I take it and hold it up to me.
“Yep, that’s it.” He grins. “Look at those eyes.”
I’m not sure how he’s done it, but he’s made me feel beautiful and happy rather than awkward and sad. “Okay, I’ll wear this. Thank you.”
He won’t let me lift a finger as he brings lasagna to the table and serves me. I savor the taste. “This is fantastic. You really are good.”
“Thanks.”
“You should be cooking for a living. Not that you’re not a great cab driver. You are. But this . . . this is a real gift.”
He smiles, and as he takes a bite, I realize he enjoys what he cooks as much as I do.
He’s just one more thing to be grateful for.