I didn't tell you

Today is the day that my grandmother died. We haven't talked about her in 8 years. Here and there, yes, briefly. We handled everything according to my grandfather's wishes. And he wished there to be no acknowledgement of her passing. There was no wake, no memorial service with friends. Nothing to celebrate her life. It was what he wanted, to bear his grief quietly, and while I respect that these were his wishes, her passing left a hole that I did not know how to deal with. My family seemed to be as bereft and adrift as I; the cultural traditions that accompany death might have helped. Might.  I seem to mark each passing year with some small token of grief, as though saying goodbye in this marginal way is somehow less painful.

This year I spent a small part of yesterday saying goodbye to someone vibrantly among the land of the living, a parting which was painful in it's own way. I look at the blocks of the gypsy quilt, somehow I'm not sure why, they remind me of her.

I came home today, and I sat for a long time, without words, with the measure of these two hurts.

Know me then.
The children out of the shade have brought me a basket.
Very small, and woven of dry grass,
Smelling as sweet in December as the day I smelled it first.
Only one other ever was that to me;
Sweet birch, from a far river. 
You would not know, you did not smell the birch.
You would not know, you did not smell the grass.
You. You did not know me then.
Know me then. 
The children out of the shade have brought me a basket.
"Basket," Thomas Hornsby Ferril