When I Think of Her

I think of her most often when I’m doing the everyday tasks. So that’s all the time.

Folding laundry.

Combing a child’s hair.

Setting a table.

Sweeping the floor.

Making dinner.

Piano music is playing on the radio and I’m doing this last thing – crushing ground beef against the side of a pot to ensure that it browns evenly – when I start to cry.

Grief is like that. It sneaks up on you at the strangest moments.

I turn the stove down and wander into the family room, letting the meat rest until I can slow the sobs.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Something she can’t do anymore.

I cry harder.

I have faith. I trust that all is well.

But sadness is…It just is.

How many days did my grandma move in a trance around her home mourning the people she’d loved and lost?

“Oh, stakkars liten” I hear her say, as she called me when I was a child. It’s Norwegian for “poor little one.”

We carry these precious pieces with us – the knowledge that we were loved, even as love was shown in the words chosen to comfort us in our everyday distress.

And this is just a small part of what I want to write about.

Some of you are aware, and others are just hearing, that I want to undertake a new challenge. I’d like to write a book for my kids about how love and grace have shown up throughout generations of their family, as it has in all our families, if we look closely enough.

I don’t know how long this will take. It could be quite a long process. But I will document it here on my blog and share how it goes with you, while offering what I hope will be useful observations so that if anyone else should like to undertake a similar adventure they can learn from my experience.

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