Dear Grandma Alice, Happy Mother's Day

This year marks the 75th time you've celebrated Mother's Day. You are in a nursing home downstate and I am missing you, wishing I could put my arms around you and stroke your hair and hold your hand. I don't know if you'd know who I am but you would know that I was there and that I am loving you.

Today, I led a blessing circle for a group a homeless teenage mothers who are trying very hard to create a new life for themselves and their young children. I asked every mother to share a story about any women who'd given them support, advice, empowerment, love or mothering. When my turn came, all I could think of was you and mom and I sitting at the kitchen table while I was very pregnant. And I was reading The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy aloud and the three of us laughed so hard we cried. And you told me not to worry about what I would do as a mother and to focus on who I would be as a mother. I think that was the last night -- the last of many -- that I slept beside you in your bed and you sang me songs and then drifted off to sleep, sending deep sighs over to me. Of all the memories I hold of you, I think of that day the most often, the three of us sharing a time in my life that was more precious than we even knew.

Alzheimer's. We found out for sure a few weeks later. It was hard to hear because of who you were -- fiery sports fan who called the U of I basketball team "my boys," babysitter well into your 80s, a person everyone in town knew and loved, the best cook ever. Especially of noodles and beef and black grape pie.

It wasn't long before we moved you to assisted living and then to a nursing home. We've lucky, though, because you've held Lil E so many times, laughing with him, stroking his hair, singing him songs as he drifted off to sleep safely in your arms.

In these moments, with him so new and you in the final chapters, I learned to be fully present in the moment, one moment at a time. I learned how to be still in the rocking chair, singing one lullaby after another, without worrying about work or the dishes or the time. I learned how to listen to the stories looping through your mind over and over. I learned how to just sit in a chair with you both, absorbing the spirit of you both, feeling grateful and quiet.

My son has your black eyes and there are times when you see him that you wistfully say, "He looks like Jim," your brother long gone and perhaps the biggest compliment you could pay my boy. The last time we were with you, he pretended your wheelchair was a bulldozer and drove it around your bed. He sat next to you between your body and the rails of the bed and talked to you intently and you smiled at him. He sang to you. He sang You Are My Sunshine and I cried to hear his sweet, high voice and see your gaze fixed on him with momentary joy. It was one of those brief passages of time that whispers that life does go on.

I am so blessed to have you. I am so blessed you have seen so much of my life unfold. And I am so blessed you brought my mother into this world and taught her to love children fiercely, laugh without abandon and sing hymns loudly. Thank you for all of this that you've put in the world and that I've been able to share.

Lil E knows you know and as he grows up, I will help him to know you better. I will tell him about how you saved JC Penny catalogs for me to cut paper dolls out of and how I slipped them in between the pages, stacked them in the closet and pulled them out to play for years and years. I will tell him how you always made angel food cake, my favorite, just for me and how you made every other person in the family who visited their own special dessert, too. I will tell him that you let me eat a brownie sundae for breakfast one time and later, when I was in college, you made many more brownies, wrapped them in foil and packed them into oatmeal containers and sent them as care packages that I ate for breakfast on the way to class.

I will keep singing him your songs and I will keep showing him the picture of us at Canon Beach in Oregon and in matching hats for the Methodist Ladies Tea and of him nestled in your arms in his Christmas outfit with the sun falling across your dreamy eyes. I will keep pointing out the flowers who's names you taught me and I will keep telling him how strong and gentle you are.

I will tell him that sometimes you said things in the name of honesty that hurt but that more often, you  said things in the name of love that comforted. I will tell him about how you read all of our horoscopes everyday and then reported in with astrological commentary when we called. I will tell him that you sewed beautifully and that you were such a dedicated Republican because your father was and the rest of your siblings chose to be Democrats. I will tell him you love black licorice and read raunchy novels and the Upper Room religiously.

I will tell him that you and my mama taught me how to be a strong woman simply by living your lives. How you taught me to cherish women simply by letting me sit at the kitchen table and listen to your stories and dirty jokes and advice. How you showed me how empowering it can be to have your grrrlfriends by your side.

How you showed me the grace that comes in visiting the cemetary where our family history is written on tombstones, stretched on a field under the winds that blow through the flatlands where some of them were once pioneers on Illinois homesteads and railroaders and hotel owners and children who left the Earth too young.

How you showed me the great span of your life when a little girl interviewed you and asked what the greatest invention of your time was and you said matter-of-factly and without hesitation, "Why, electricity."

I will tell him that my heart is always full of love for you. I will show him bits of paper I've saved with your handwriting and I will bake pies with him the way we did every Thanksgiving. I will tell him that I miss you everyday.

I will do this for him. And I will do this for myself so I can keep that spirit alive in my heart and in the words that I say and in the family I am creating.

You are hours away in your bed at the far end of a wing in the nursing home tonight. I am in my tiny apartment in the middle of my city. But where you are, I am with you. And where I am, you are here too.

Happy Mother's Day, Grandma Alice.