(photos from my sister amy’s house in utah, my nana’s house in utah, link’s preschool, my house, and the bud-filled lovingest alleys in my neighborhood.)
it is a one 1000 year adventure in one day: a teserrect, a wrinkle in time. the heart grows wiser and in a day you laugh and cry for a lifetime. you wake up in your bed the next morning, blinking: was it a dream?
my little nana died, and as i was surrounded by the community of people celebrating her i felt overwhelmed with regret– here was someone i made very little effort to get to know. and i was her granddaughter. and she was gone.
we stare at our dead and we cry: because we belonged to them, and they, us.
i cried for my mother, who lost her mother.
“this is going to be an unusual funeral, because my mother was an unusual woman!” (line from my aunt deborah’s talk— turns out my nana already planned her funeral and told my aunt that’s what she wanted her to say. ) 😀
i learned that my nana made joy her practice. she chose joy. she was a tap dancing orphan. she fixed everything with whiteout and staplers. 🙂 and my mom’s family is funny. this was a FUN-eral. and it was a brilliant and sunny day, surrounded by truly majestic mountains.
and i was taught—–love ’em hard when you can. celebrate the living— all of my sisters were together for a day. <3
we sat in my nana’s living room ’til it was dark, going through her stacks and stacks of scrapbooks. we wandered her house, told to take whatever we wanted.
i brought home a table cloth, a “joy” sign made by my nana with sharpie and whiteout, a handmade apron, and a wreath for the front door. her joy lives on at my home.
