I choke back tears as I write this...
In my young life there stood one bastion of love, a true embodiment of the nature of 'agape'. True to the nature of the word, this woman loved me as Christ loved all mankind. This isn't to say that I was able to get away with anything I wanted as some grandchildren do, on the contrary, I was always told what was expected of me, and then loved despite my faults.
She served others out of love and had to be forced to sit and eat, and always ate last. We always had plenty, but still it was in her nature to be sure all were settled before settling herself.
I have done mediumship work for years privately and have been stunned at my precision, but I shut down after my grandmother passed on shortly after her birthday in 2003. This past Thursday, I heard her voice again through another for the first time in over ten years. The medium knows me, but there was no way for her to have known the name my grandmother never used with anyone except on her tax forms. Even her checks had her middle name. I checked out her obituaries online and my name doesn't appear in any of them. Hearing this medium speak her "secret" name was enough validation for me. As I have said, I have done this for others before, but it has never happened to me.
I have wandered off from the true tone I wanted to convey here, but I will attempt to move it back to course.
She said she was sorry for not doing a better job for me, but I could only reply that nobody could have done a better job than she did with me, which is the truth. She made sure that I never wanted for anything and always supported me in anything I wanted to do and anything I wanted to be. I always tried to not disappoint her. I fear I have by some choices I made in life, but I pray that she knows that those crossroads would have appeared no matter what she would have done.
I'm not being overly dramatic when I say I owe my life to this woman.
I owe my mother a lot too, but even my mother said to me once that it sometimes feels like I'm more her brother than her son in regard to how my grandparents cared for me, paid for my education and supported me financially through my training. I felt for a long time like this statement from her was a hurtful one, like I was bypassing her mother role. I know now it was simply a statement of fact for my grandmother was the one that was most there for me.
I lived in their house for a month after my grandfather had his stroke and had to be moved to my mother's house for full time supervision. On my grandmother's bedside table were two books. Her bible and a copy of my book that I had signed and given to her. I can only believe that she saw the truth in those words and knew I had found God in my own way and my own heart, and that she took comfort in those pages as she did her Bible.
I have log held on to her spirit, but as the previous post details, I let her go after a decade of mourning that loss. Now she is with me more than ever. I give her the highest praise my soul can muster, and offer up my unconditional love as she did.
Something tells me I should make the trip to Scarborough Fair this year. I've always had an excuse not to go, but she came across with the name Rosemary and sang on to sage and thyme.
So I'll end this now at 2am. I must go off from the dreams of day into the dreams of night. Perhaps another adventure lies there waiting for me as did last night. I must have been having a grand time as the dog decided to wake me up and tell me to be quiet so she could sleep.
"To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come," ~ Shakespeare
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
(On the side of a hill in the deep forest green)
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
(Tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground)
Without no seams nor needlework
(Blankets and bedclothes the child of the mountain)
Then she'll be a true love of mine
(Sleeps unaware of the clarion call)
Tell her to find me an acre of land
(On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves)
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
(Washes the ground with so many tears)
Between the salt water and the sea strand
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun)
Then she'll be a true love of mine
Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather
(War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions)
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
(Generals order their soldiers to kill)
And to gather it all in a bunch of heather
(And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten)
Then she'll be a true love of mine
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
~Simon & Garfunkel
