Grandmother’s Wisdom
The endearing task of writing this column each month has become for me a sort of beloved yet sacred space. A time for me to share with you (the world) some window into places you either can relate to or might not have thought about before. Occasionally I find myself giving the same kinds of wisdom that I learned from a mother who was also a grand MOTHER.
As a result of my father’s decision to remarry so quickly after my mother’s death, my Nana spent many years mothering, protecting and teaching us about life and what it meant to be a friend, a neighbor, a wife, a sister, a daughter, and eventually a mother. A very different upbringing I might add since Nana was born in 1902. I flew her here for her last few holidays and birthdays and the sensors in the airport loved us as she had had two complete hip replacement surgeries! She inspired me and constantly reminded me of where deep down the drive…the guts..and the “meat and taters” as it were came from.
Through my years of working as an artist I have had a chance to meet and become a large part of my families lives. As their artist it is important to me to be a part of their family and I never wanted to be a “studio” anyway. I have many who have passed away and I have found that in many cases I was the last true record of the relationship of a grandmother to a child.
Recently “we” the Alisa Murray Family said goodbye to one of our wonderful grandmothers. One of my families came in and I could tell as soon as I laid eyes on them something was terribly wrong. Then the news came of cancer and a quick passing and a thank God for those portraits and the time, and the friendship, and the love. They portrayed the ultimate for me as an artist because as an educated person you know complete civilizations are documented in museums through the eyes of it’s artists. Often overlooked as a necessary person in people’s lives, I feel, and so do those in my family, that the need for an artist is as important to the carrying on of a family as the doctors are to one’s health.
Nana would be celebrating her 105th this month, had she lived. She passed just before turning 103. I remember the flight to see her after the first blowing stroke as the eldest of five and who also happened to be the only one who moved away, was the last to arrive.
I have discovered that the five senses are very important in reaching out to people in general but especially when birth and death are near. It was when I began massaging her feet with her scent “Estee” that I had given her under the tree almost every year, she stopped. She actually stopped the flailing that a stroke of this magnitude brings and looked at me with her watery blue eyes. I knew and she knew at once that I, the first-born granddaughter had arrived. All were aware of every stage and as we gracefully stepped through it like a birth with labor so we went into death.
Afterwards, as I visited her body something very strange happened. I saw that this is only a house. My Nana was gone. In addition, a torch was passed, a powerful miracle of the same magnitude of a baby’s first cry I witnessed in the sweet peace I saw. The soul had left it’s housing. The most important lesson of letting go and remembering all the things of a grandmother is in having been a keeper of the wisdom and the love and the portraits. I stepped off the plane and set my feet on what I now know as my home, sweet Texas. I was all grown up. I was also alone. Once I opened the door to my entry hall the first portrait that hangs is of her hands, at 101 with James Edward’s feet. Those were the same hands I had felt hug me as a child and were pressed together when I came in too late with her waiting up in her rocking chair. She used to do circles with her thumbs in church when we said the benediction and she crewel and crocheted wonderful things that are now here. When I find myself saying her sayings it makes me smile and the very basis of my own parenting has been fly by the seat of my (you know what!) tempered with the wisdom of essentially a mother of many many years. As a result of those things I can make a mean southern biscuit, I know how to fight from a woman who was in the news because she shot a fox she saw in her hen house! She told me once that I was to “be myself, always. People either liked me or they didn’t… there is no need to be a butterfly.” That helped a little in middle school when I chose to play the trombone and not the flute…. but mostly now as an adult feeling quite middle aged and well aged. I’ll teach it to my own crew. All her fire and spunk are still here in me and awakening in my children. It’s funny for me to watch them do things that are so much of her.
So, as I saw my family and felt with them the loss of such an important player for them as a leader, and a snuggle up to lap to bring boo boo’s to for the grandson, I shared with them my wisdom from the perspective of a torch carrier, a keeper of the “things” and as their artist. I gave to them a place to weep and remember and smile and remember. I told them again what I told them the first day we met. Old people are always the best people to be friends with. They have walked the paths first and just “know” things. Mostly everything. Be a keeper of the things and the photographs… it’s those that are worth more than pure gold. Grandmothers are to always be remembered and celebrated FOREVER!
