Remembering Memaw

This morning I reached for a spoon from the cutlery drawer for my coffee like I’ve done thousands of times before. My cutlery drawer is an amazing mishmash of sizes, shapes and patterns of all sorts of useful and non useful items. I went for a familiar spoon near the top and found myself in a time warp.

It was one of my grandmother’s spoons. I have two of them in different sizes. Just for a moment I wasn’t in my own house in my own kitchen. I was a little girl with a spoon in my hand in Memaw’s kitchen. I was standing in front of the cupboard where she kept the plates and cups. She was to my right at the sink and I was a kid again. I felt the warmth of her love, knew the familiar sound of the little crackle in her voice, I was at the only safe place I knew in my childhood. And I missed my grandmother.

She was an amazing woman. She had her share of hardships in her life but wasn’t defined by them. I was pretty much an adult by the time I realized the heartaches she had endured through life. All I had known till then was an outpouring of love in the many ways she expressed it. It gave me a profound appreciation for the grace that had been bestowed upon her to rise above those things and minister to those around her. I had truly been blessed – as the first grandchild I knew her longer and probably better than the cousins who came behind me. We lived close enough that I was there a lot, enough that I want my home to be the blessing to those I love just as hers was to me.

So what do I keep of my grandmother’s legacy?

A love of learning. Even during her last hospitalization when we learned she was dying of cancer she wanted to know everything about this strange (puff) quilt I was working on. She was forever learning some new skill.

A love of nature. She did so many amazing things with flowers and rocks and wood. When she went to Hawaii in the 70’s she came back with a suitcase full of rocks for her flower beds. I did the same thing when we went to Alaska a few years ago.

A love of thrift. Memaw wasted nothing. The great depression was a way of life for the Heards. Nothing went to waste, ever. Egg cartons and bags were saved to be reused. Usable clothing was passed on or put in a quilt. Things from the garden were canned, frozen or given away. Pork parts were made into souse in her refrigerator.

A love of people. I couldn’t have been more than six when I accompanied her down to Goat Mitchell’s place to take food and clothing for an impoverished family. Everybody who came to her house was welcomed and treated with dignity and respect. And everybody was expected to behave respectfully. I can’t remember ever seeing an ugly argument or sinful behavior from an adult at her house. Kids had full freedom to just be kids and be loved and enjoyed for who they were. And when it was time to spread your wings and go on with God she bestowed her hearty admonition and blessing with a Schofield Bible.

A love of hard work. I didn’t have the capacity to appreciate this till I was an adult.

A love of simple pleasures. People, music, laughter.

A love of creativity. Rocks, scraps and shells became works of art in her hands. Even on her deathbed she stitched star quilt blocks by hand.

A love of God. I knew from the time I was very little that Memaw loved God. My own fledgling faith took wings the year I was in 11th grade and spent one night a week at her house. No TV there. We had a delightful time studying the Bible together and finding new things. I learned to pray the summer I spent there after high school when my daddy got saved.

So did that spoon have some cosmic energy built up that brought all that rushing back to me? (I’m laughing as I write because that is so ridiculous!) Did her spirit brush by me as I picked it up to remind me how much I missed her? (No, I’m not spiritualist either, at least not in that sense.) No, nothing like that. After the previously mentioned hospitalization she lived several more years at home while the family cared for her. She gradually became a shell of the person she had been. We visited her every chance we got and each time she was less and less of herself. I think part of me had forgotten who she was before she was sick. The spoon just triggered the memories to come back. It was time and I can grieve today.

Tomorrow, her oldest great grandchild and her only great great grandchild will join us for Sunday dinner. We'll love, we'll laugh, and we plan to gather around the piano and make joyful noises like previous generations did at her house. I don't know if Jesus lets the saints in heaven take little field trips down here or peek in from heaven but I hope so. I know it would please her immensely.