I know I'm super post-happy right now, but I promise this is it. I'm just trying to get everything together in one place! So here's our tribute video and the essay I wrote regarding the incident before Rach's graduation party.
The Power of a Simple Conversation
One of the biggest paradoxes of the times that we live in is that we have the technology to communicate with hundreds of thousands of people a day, and yet we isolate ourselves like no other generation before us. In the comparatively few conversations we engage in on a regular basis, we rarely open up past superficiality and the illusions we’ve created about ourselves. As much as we long for real, deep contact with another human, we often avoid it. But some people are still daring enough, or hurt and vulnerable enough, to bare their true feelings and their shortcomings. Such people are hard to find, but impossible to forget.
In May, my friend Katie and I walked into Wal-Mart with the impression we’d walk out with a card and a couple of pictures. When we walked out we had those items in our arms, but we had so much more on our hearts.
We immediately headed back to the photo section, surveying the familiar goods with a somewhat distracted eye as we talked about the news of the day: our friend Rachael’s graduation, and one of our famous get-togethers. We set up shop at an available kiosk, next to an older lady with a large stack of pictures beside her. Her short white hair had been combed neatly, and she wore little to no make-up. One of the employees joked that she was a new team member, because she stayed there from nine to five, everyday.
As she gracefully and skillfully began to work her way through her pile, questions began to bubble up in me. I could hardly focus on the task of choosing the photos for my friend. The lady had a sad sort of look about her, and seemed to be trying to immerse herself in the present. She even looked over and helped my friend and me get started, engaging us in brief small talk. As we went back to our work, I could still hear the melancholy notes of her voice in the air. She spoke with a hint of a smile, but it was a sad sort of smile. I wondered the meaning behind it. As inquiries raced to my tongue, I could check them. While I was burning with curiosity, I didn’t want to be invasive. I was exceedingly grateful when my friend took the lead and asked the very thing that had been at the forefront of my wonderings: why was she scanning so many pictures?
I remember how she turned every so slightly, as if she was preparing to share something important with us. Katie and I perked up, ready for whatever bizarre explanation we expected for a sixty-some year old woman spending her days at a Wal-Mart photo kiosk. She launched into a description of the thousands of photos she had. She told us how she treasured them greatly, because they were all she had left of her mother and grandmother to tangibly remember them by. Her blue eyes twinkled as she spoke of the memories of the times captured. She told us that she was attempting to preserve that, in the digital age we live in now.
Although that explanation would have sufficed, I dare say Katie and I would have left the store largely the same as when we had entered. However, she didn’t stop there; she spoke of losing her parents and the pain that she experienced. She spoke of her husband. Her voice softened and her eyes began to moisten as she described their life together. Then the real purpose of her photo scanning appeared. While preserving the memories was important, it was more prevalent that just two weeks ago, her husband of decades had passed away. She couldn’t stand to be at home-in their home-without him. She related tales of their childhood together with a slight laugh and told us of her very first kiss from him-a butterfly kiss. Her face lit up as she spoke of their connection and the happiness they had shared. Her love was evident within our first ten minutes speaking with her. She couldn’t stop talking about him, even after knowing each other and living with each other for over forty years. It was such a selfless love, so unconditional. “We never fought once,” she said. “If he hurt my feelings, or I hurt his, we would discuss it, but we understood each other.” I listened to her speak so passionately about the love that had so radically permeated her life, and I wondered if I, too, would experience such a wonderful emotion.
When we began to speak of the latter years of their life together, her face got cloudy. The mood completely shifted as she spoke of his death. “I’m mad at him,” she insisted. She paused. “On our last anniversary, he promised me twenty more,” she said, as her voice cracked slightly. She told us about the funeral, and her little granddaughter sobbing as “they left Grandpa.” It broke this lady’s heart even further, because she too didn’t want to leave her love. She told us about the minister, comforting her, and all the well-meaning people using the cliché “He’s in a better place now.” “How can it be a better place,” she wondered, “if we’re not together?” The pain on her face spoke more than any amount of talking ever could. The tone of her voice slid from the gloomy, melancholy tone to a dark, anguished one. As the expounded on her theories of heaven and hell, I could see the hurt in her face. The emotions were real, more real than almost any I have ever dealt with. She said that she liked the idea of heaven, but if she believed in heaven, she would be obligated to believe in hell, and she hated that idea. As much as she wanted to go to heaven, she thought everyone she knew would be in hell. If that was the case, that’s where she wanted to go, she explained. I didn’t know what to respond to that. She elaborated, adding that she’d just like to go back to wherever she was before she was born. Her expression became almost whimsical, as she imagined whatever she thought that may entail. My heart broke for her.
As the conversation slowly came to an end, I was in ever-increasing awe at the love that she described having for the man who had so recently left her. She told story after story of the great passion and companionship that marked her life, and the sufferings that she had faced with one man beside her through them all. With him, she’d learned to live without her mother, and they’d suffered through the loss of their only son together; he’d held her hand while she watched her father deteriorate due to Alzheimer’s. Each line in her face seemed to represent a crevice that had once been filled by the love of this man. As she so desperately reached out to two teenage girls who happened to be at the right place at the right time, we were changed. Never before had we encountered not only such real and passionate love, but for the first time, we were facing a woman who clearly had no agenda, no impressions to keep up, and no ulterior motives. She simply wanted an ear in which she could pour out her soul.
As we walked away, we could barely speak. The enormity of the message she had shared weighed heavily on us. In the days and weeks that followed it was a subject constantly on my mind. Her wisdom and permeated every aspect of my day to day life. For a long time I could not articulate the impact that she’d had on me, but simple thoughts she shared would come into my mind often. Not only did this woman teach me about the love we ought to have for our family members, she also made real for me a tiny sliver of the love that Christ feels for his own bride, the Church and that kind of a revelation is not one which you can walk away from unchanged.
