Eric's Grandmother

[Guest guest]

Thank you Eric for sharing that about your grandmother. It reminded me of

both my grandmothers in India who never went to school and learned to read.

 

Eric, You have a rare gift for expressing your personal truths and making us

aware that these are in fact universal truths.

 

In India, we lived in a big house in the "Joint Family" system with many

uncles and aunts. What great parties I saw, and what great squabbles as

well! :-).

 

You have a calling for writing Eric, a talent for expression, and a deep

quality of sincerity, wisdom, and patience which life's many experiences

have given you.

 

Thanks for bringing us the blessing of your presence.

 

Love to all

Harsha

 

 

EBlackstead [EBlackstead]

Monday, October 29, 2001 6:52 PM

Re: Wim's mother passed away.

 

 

Wim & Friends,

 

My grandmother, having survived my grandfather by almost 13 years,

lived across the hall from me in a large house my father had bought

specifically for the purpose of inviting my mother's parents to come

and live with us.

 

When she was 97 and I was 21 or so, she confided in me, that after

Carl, her husband of more than 60 years, had died, she'd hoped that

she would become better friends with my mother. When she came to

realize that that wasn't going to happen, she said to me, "Now I

think I just want to go to Heaven and live with Carl". She uttered

this incomprehensible ideal with such unquestionable sincerity that I

later realized that I'd had my first direct contact with religious

life and the personal faith that could give it life.

 

She and Carl were the perfect Victorian couple. I like to think that

they were the last perfect Victorian couple. Before they came to live

with us, they would come to visit at Christmas time when they would

set up "Santa's Workshop", proclaimed by a sign on the door, in the

same room across the hall from me that they would eventually come to

permanently live in. While my mother and uncle gave proof that they

weren't perfect parents, they were flawless grandparents, living as

if in a snowy winter scene that you shake up in a crystal ball,

parallel to, but not actually touching our world at all.

 

My Grandmother's maiden name was Lillian Viola Bearce, and her

husband's name was Carl Fulson Getchell. Can you imagine a couple

living together through the 20th century with names like that?

 

yours in the bonds,

eric