Withered Flowers & Goodbyes

Every summer we would travel deep into the Delta. Mississippi just has a smell about it. Its neither good nor bad, just is, it’s burned in my memory. I can smell her old cigarette smoke. Sitting on the end of her bed in her shotgun house talking into the wee hours of evening about anything, everything, and nothing at all. Mary Moore was southern, loud, the definition of real/down-to-earth/without pretense sort of a woman that would be a friend to anyone. She would straight talk you until you flat out blushed. Yeah, black or not, she’d turn your cheeks plain red (warm smile). She wasn’t educated in the formal sense. She had her greeting cards read to her. She was the definition of poverty in America, and the definition of the dream to rise above it. She wasn’t rich, but she wasn’t poor. Rich in love, in family, in laughter, in good food, she was. On the heels of slavery, she worked many years as a sharecropper (yeah my Grandmother in case you’re wondering about it again). Her sister, my Great Aunt, fought those evils hard and on the front lines, but that’s a story for another day.

Mary Moore. Grandma. I can see the white Bunny bread on her counter. I can smell the hot bacon in the cast iron skillet and the gas fire ablaze heating said skillet. I can feel that soft Mississippi water running over my hands in her kitchen sink. I can remember thinking 9 people lived in this 800 (or less) square foot house. Nine people. The floors were never level. The house was all tired and worn out. I suppose it was just like it should be. A house should always be well-lived in, shouldn’t it? And it was as pretty as anything; I am certain I inherited my love for all things interior design straight from her. It wasn’t a pretty house by the definition of most, but when you walked in the way she set everything just made you think BEAUTIFUL. She was beautiful. Her skin a rich ebony. I watched it wrinkle year after year growing up. She was soft to touch. The years of her life were hard, but she was soft. And I loved her.

She was far from perfect, but aren’t we all (knowing smile)? She lived in the days of deep and obvious racism. In grocery store lines sometimes she moved aside so a white person could walk ahead of her. It was Mississippi, and that’s just how it was, how sometimes still is but in a different sort of way. She was a housekeeper; she cleaned houses and that’s how she found much of her decor, that and yard sales. She had a knack for finding beautiful things. One year she offered me a piece from her, to me, infamous collection. I happily chose a large stone vase; it’s woven into my own home now. It is the most perfect thing. She actually got to visit my home before she lost the first leg to gangrene (yeah, that still happens?). She walked up the stairs here and looked all around. I love that she got to see our town, our place, her vase.

Mary Moore unfurled like the prettiest of flowers. She tasted all of life’s sweetness and bitterness, living in rebellion and then repentance. Time washed over her like rain from the heavens. I had always sort of hoped she would live forever, you know? We all know that’s not even possible, but when you’re a little girl with pigtails you can’t imagine life without those visits, without that house, the smell of it, and the arms of your grandma. Even if her words were off-color, even if for the longest time she just put me off when I spoke about my deepest love, my Jesus. It would be my momma’s honor to hear her confess that name, and I rejoice in that. And I am so glad, because even the prettiest flowers wilt, wither, and perish. It’s the beauty of all the petals falling you remember though. The softening of a heart, life so hard by all the sorts of things that would make any soul lean toward stiff arming love, but in the end she caved to grace, to eternal beauty. And I pray that we all would. That every single time life offers up something that threatens to harden our hearts; we would refuse the temptation and soften to Christ instead. This world we live in is so very hard. And we lose sometimes what we love, but God is love, perfect love. And we can give to Him.

I wish I had more time to know her, to love her, to embrace, but the time has run dry. And her eyes closed with death just a day ago. She struggled to catch her last breaths of air looking her children in the eyes and then God took her. I wished I had been there to sing her an old hymn, to remind her of days past, to tell her with my own voice once more that I love her, that I am so glad she was my Grandma and not another. I would visit that mosquito-plagued place just to see her; I would ask her for one more treasure from her home. And what I’d really be asking for is a bit more of her heart.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. Psalm 116:15