Holy ground
This is holy ground. I stood here for a long while and the tears came quickly. It’s a day I’ve dreaded for about 20 years. I knew it would happen eventually and I tried to prepare, but how do you prepare for a moment like this? This is the ground that built me. My roots are in this soil. This is the place where I first met Jesus, I just didn’t know his name yet. It’s not a church, but I learned more about faith here than I did in church as a child. I learned about love and grace and forgiveness here. I learned about hospitality. I learned about being safe and and fully known. I daydreamed in the grass in the backyard under the apple tree and I climbed the magnolia in the front yard as high as I could go. I cried hot tears and I laughed deep belly laughs inside the walls that once stood here. This is the house that built me. The last place I lived with my beloved grandparents. And this past week, their home was bulldozed to the ground.
The day we drove past, it was nothing more than a pile of bricks and red Georgia clay. Nails and rocks and little pieces of wood were sprinkled into the pile. Shaun parked the car and I walked slowly to the site of every memory I hold of my precious grandparents. It was hard. The pain was fresh. I don’t cry as readily at their graves because I don’t feel them there. They were never there. But they were here. They were so fully alive at 51 Thompson Street. They helped me with homework and they cooked big southern feasts and they hosted me for sleepovers and they told me stories and sang songs from their childhood. My grandfather played the harmonica and tried to get me to sing along to songs from days long gone by. We watched jeopardy and wheel of fortune and (sometimes) even cartoons. I learned about John Wayne and westerns and I cherished the smell of my grandfather’s rich scent of cologne and chewing tobacco. If I close my eyes, I can see every room of that house. I can feel the edges of the dining room table my grandfather built and the way my grandmother’s hand felt in mine when she would sit next to me. Rarely she sat, she was always on the move, cooking, cleaning, caring for everyone around her. She was always the caretaker, making sure all other needs were met before worrying about her own.
His heart stopped beating in that house. One sad August day, just before I started college, he took his last breath in that house. I remember our last deep conversation. I had gotten him a special handicap parking space for my high school graduation because he had been ill. I didn’t know just how ill yet. I came home so excited to tell him that I had the space and he could come to my graduation after all. Silly me. Thinking it was only the space stopping him. He looked at me tenderly and said, “I won’t make it to this graduation, baby girl. But I’ll be at your next one.” We sat for a while and we talked. We listened to the hum of the window air conditioning unit that nearly drowned out the noise of the birds chirping outside. (How was life just continuing on all around us?) I held his hand and I kissed his stubbly, weathered cheek, taking care not to hit the bandage covering the skin cancer that had just been removed, and I told him I loved him and I would see him the next day. I left and I wept the whole way home. The truth no one had been able to tell me was finally clear. If my grandfather, my biggest fan and my lifelong supporter, was not coming to my graduation, it could only mean one thing. The days and weeks following were so hard. And then the agony of his funeral. But ironically, I didn’t know that was just the beginning. Soon my grandmother would be ill. And sooner still, I would have to say goodbye to her. That one is too painful to write, as it’s a grief I still carry with me. I know Jesus has overcome the grave and I know where my beloved grandmother is. But the sting of this world without her in it is far too great to sum up in a few short sentences.
I visited the house over the years. Sometimes knocking and going inside to look around (after sharing my story and getting the sympathy of the new occupants of that sacred space). Sometimes just driving by. But knowing it was there was a comfort to me. The day the for sale sign went up in the yard, the tears came fast again. Unluckily for me, the real estate in their town had put the option of buying that precious home far out of my reach. Anytime I’m in town, I drive by. Holding my breath in fear that the house will be gone. And finally, it is. But the memories aren’t.
I stopped by again the other day and slowly walked the property. I imagined each room of the house as I walked the cracked ground. I imagined looking out the window-just past my grandfather’s chair. I imagined the smells coming from the kitchen; the cheerful chatter of neighbors stopping in for a fresh baked biscuit. I looked up at the clouds and I looked back at the trees. I spoke aloud to the old, proud trees, asking them not to forget. Never to forget the love that lived in front of them for so many years. I know I never will.
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