-I remember taking this picture intentionally. I set my camera to black and white to purposefully capture this woman as she looked to the sky, not posed, just something she was doing looking around at the museum we visited in Kentucky on our way to her brother in Ohio.
I spent most of my life staring at this face. I knew the lines and creases better than any landscape I had ever studied. I looked to justify every crevice and angle of her portrait. I could see a lifetime of pursed lips that cracked around her mouth. I stared at those lips for years as I listened to the words she shared from them. I knew every mole and age spot. I could tell where on her face I was touching just by the texture of the crepe skin under my fingers.
Here I see her squinting, trying to understand something, either a step back into time where we were learning about this site, or just wandering back to another time and place in her mind. I can see her laugh lines around her eyes and her cheeks that were there as long as I could remember my grandmother. She was just 36 when I was born, and she was in my life my entire life. Ironically, I was 36 when I took this picture of my grandmother. I was nowhere near being a grandmother, I was a mother to a 10 year old and a 5 year old at the time.
I always considered that-the life difference we experienced. She was a mother at the age I was a freshman in college and a new bride. By the time she was a grandmother, I was still in the elementary school phase with my own children. What she learned in her young adulthood shadowed anything I thought I knew at the same age. By the time I was born, she had three children, two husbands, and had lived through a world war, and Vietnam first hand.
At the same age, I too had experienced a life’s worth of maturity, but in different capacities. I also experienced the war as my husband had served in multiple tours for OIF/OEF. Our firstborn had health issues from birth, until she died just a few months before this picture. I clutched my youngest close to me, yet shared her with this woman who was truly a grandmother to her great granddaughters.
My grandmother is by far one my greatest heroes, and I miss her terribly. I still cannot fathom that she would be 81, an age she never expected to reach, and sadly did not. She was my mother for much of my life, my best friend for even more, and the best role model I could ever have.
She taught me to stand up for what I believe in, but hold my tongue if I wanted to keep the relationship. I watched her do this more times than I could count! She taught me to garden, keep house, be resourceful, waste not/want not, make even inexpensive things into precious treasures, and to show my love for others in generosity. She taught me to love God and to study His word, even when I could not be in His house. I learned how to love fiercely, cry silently, anger rarely, and forgive frequently. Some lessons I learned better than others, and many I still strive to perfect.
As I look at the delicate lines starting to grace my own complexion, I have learned to appreciate their presence, and I wear them as badges of honor, as they each tell a story of the life I have lived. I hope to have deep laugh lines, few lines in a furrowed brow, and a few wrinkles across the bridge of my nose from holding back tears. As I find myself looking into the distance from time to time, I know more what she was looking for, and often what she was seeing when she was off in “la-la land”.
I miss this beautiful face. I long to look into her grey eyes once again. I hear her words in my heart, and I find myself looking into the distance once in a while looking for her. Until then…
“Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?” (Job 12:12, NIV)