A Love that Does Not End

I haven't written about this because I wanted to make sure I got it right, but you can never quite get something like this right.

Eight days ago, I woke up to a message that my Grandma had two brain aneurysms in the middle of the night. The next day I drove home to South Carolina and kept vigil in a hospital waiting room with my parents, Granddad, aunts, uncles, and other relatives as we hoped she would wake up. I returned to Nashville on Friday and Grandma passed away the next day. Later today we will celebrate the life of Sharon Williams.

For days I have been trying to formulate the words that capture what losing her feels like and I can never grasp them. Emotionally I have been all over the map. I have cried. I have been okay. I have felt numb. And then I go through them all again. I don't know what to write about a woman who has always been there. I don't know this world without her. It sometimes feels like her absence would be like the color blue being removed from the world; the sky and sea rendered gray. I can imagine it, but it seems wrong.

Grandma was one of the most incredible, wonderful people I have ever known. Her home was a home to many; whether you were related to her or not. She loved others fiercely and prayed for people with fervor. A public educator for forty years, Grandma loved to learn. She was always curious, always asking questions. She loved that I often asked for books on Christmas and birthdays and would either read them before she gave them to me or ask to read them afterwards. She would email me these in depth questions about theology. I loved to sit at her table after meals and hear her and the other grownups talk about their faith, politics, and whatever else was going on in the world.

She was a master of hospitality. I mentioned that her home was home to so many. She and Granddad have opened their doors to countless people. EA and I are among many who have lived under their roof. She fed so many people and fed them well. I loved going to her house for a meal. Christmas and Thanksgiving didn't seem like they had really happened unless we had gathered at her house. And she always looked out for us in the little things. Even though she made a great cranberry sauce, she would always get the store-bought variety on which you can see the ridges of the can because she knew I liked them. When I wasn't able to make a holiday dinner, she always made me an apple pie and sent it along to me. And those were the best apple pies on this planet. I will fight anyone who disputes this.

She was always in my corner. She was in the corner for all of her people. You always knew that she loved you. You always knew she was praying for you. You always knew that she would be straight with you about whatever was going on your life. And I cannot tell you what it means to have a person that amazing who cares for you. I'm ridiculously fortunate that I have had more than a few.

Grandma's faith was the animating force beneath everything that she did. As she taught, as she showed hospitality, as she learned, and as she loved, her love for God was behind it all. I think she is one of the reasons why I never really bought it when people told me women couldn't be ministers. She was a minister. Sure, she wasn't a minister vocationally, but she was a minister in seemingly everything she did. Her lifelong example of loving God and others is a prominent part of my journey into vocational ministry. My life would look far different without her love.

And when I consider that love, I realize that Grandma will never truly be gone. Her physical presence is not with us and that hurts something awful because she means so much to so many of us. Just thinking about her absence causes an immense ache inside my heart. I cannot tell you how much I wish I could talk to her one more time. Even the belief that I will see her again one day does not do a lot to ease the sting of right now.

But if I am who I am because of the love that Grandma has given me then that means that the love I give to my sons, my students at church, the random person in line with me at lunch; the love I show will have her fingerprints all over it. And the love those people give will have her mark on it too. As will the love that those people show. And so on and so forth for years and years to come.

My grandmother easily touched the lives of thousands of people during her 79 years on earth and the love that she showed to my parents, my siblings, my wife, my sons, my aunts, uncles and cousins, students, youth in Sunday school classes, Meals on Wheels recipients, friends, strangers and more people than I could name; the love she showed to all of those people will be present in the love those people show. That is a love that does not end and thus Grandma is never truly gone. Her legacy of love will only grow. Even when those of us who knew her have joined her, her love will still course through the hearts of so many.

So Grandma, I know you usually read my blog, and maybe, hopefully if you are not too busy singing to God, reliving your circus days, or giving some Biblical figure your unvarnished thoughts, you'll get around to reading this. Thank you for everything: for all the conversations, for encouraging my love of books, for your faith, for the ways you and Granddad made me laugh, for my mom, for giving EA and I a place to live, for the apple pies, for giving Mom the recipe for your apple pie, for the way your home always felt like a second home to me, and for more than I could ever say. I miss you so much already and I am so incredibly grateful that I got to be your grandson. I love you and I will try my best to carry on the legacy of love that you left me.