On the Occasion of My Grandmother's Wedding
It's a very good story.
My grandmother gets married today.
She was married before, for 64 years, beginning in her mother-in-law’s living room when she was 17. Their life together should be a book: poverty, war, faith, trauma; a business startup; kids, grandkids, great grandkids; countless birthdays, Christmases, Easters. Their marriage laid the foundation or planted a seed or leavened the bread, whatever metaphor you prefer, for my whole considerable family. They showed us how to love God and each other and keep gathering and praying and giving gifts and laughing with each other. It’s one of those things I know shaped my life at the roots, and no matter how much I think about it, and I often do, I’ll never understand the scope of what they did for me.
And then, about five years ago, my grandfather died.
It broke all of us a little bit. For me, anyway, it meant not just that Charles, my bespectacled, collared-shirted, wheelchair-using, remarkably witty, endlessly loving grandfather had gone away. It meant he wouldn’t be sitting in his office when I came into their house or praying over us at every birthday (after being reminded whose birthday it was) or talking with my grandmother like I wasn’t there about how wonderful and beautiful I was or earnestly commissioning us, “Don’t hold back!” every time my mom and grandmother and I went shopping (with his credit card). It meant he wouldn’t be inhabiting their home and marriage any longer, keeping them the safest places I ever knew.
Of course all of that isn’t gone. Everything I described still lives in me and my family. It’s just a gift from the past, now.
When I say we all broke a little upon his death, I exclude Shirley, my vibrant, exuberant, fuschia and florals-clad, crochet needle-wielding, perpetually hostessing, endlessly loving grandmother. She broke a lot. Entirely, she believed. I’ve never seen the sheer, sacred pain I witnessed in their home in the hours, days, weeks, and years after his death. She came undone—and of course she did. 64 years is a lifetime for many, and how do you just keep living when life as you lived it for a lifetime goes away overnight?
But here is a miracle: she did keep living. I tell you, she has lived more in these past years than many ever do. She spent months in pure grief, and then months in hard recovery, and I mean hard. She actively, daily did things she didn’t want to do so she could keep living, because against her advice, the Lord had decided not to take her away just yet. She joined the widows’ group at her church and found all the other women who had kept living, and started doing it with them. Then, of course, she found any new widows and brought them into the group, her house, and their way of life.
I lost track of all the church groups she joined, in fact; all I know is when she goes to all of them, she spends half of Sunday at church.
She also spends several days a week with her great grandchildren. They go on walks and trips to the pool and she makes them snacks and teaches them to crochet. It looks uncannily like my own childhood.
Perhaps my favorite thing she’s done is join a jail ministry. It is what it sounds like: once a week, she packs the clear plastic purse required for the occasion and goes to the OKC jail to meet with prisoners, listen to their problems, pray with them, and tell them about Jesus. She once told my mom joining the ministry probably wasn’t for her because she wasn’t sure my mom could handle it.
Say what you will of modernity’s ills, but past generations really missed out on group texts with their grannies. A message we recently received:
Yesterday [the jailer] took [us] to the 13th floor of the jail. That is where the really hardened people are. We talked to a 20 year old woman [incarcerated for murder]. We used the four spiritual laws and she put her faith in Jesus.
Another:
Two ladies were saved at the jail today. Another redecorated her life to Jesus.
Jesus invented autocorrect just for that message.
You might think this is a strange story to tell on the occasion of her remarriage. I don’t think so. Because in the middle of all this, as her brother Ronald merrily repeated when he recently came to visit, “Along came Jon.”
It went something like this: at one of those many church groups she attends, a gentleman named Jon began appearing. He noticed Shirley always around. Frankly, she's hard to miss. He sat next to her one day and asked if she had a boyfriend.
“No.”
“Do you want one?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How about we just go to coffee?”
“Okay.”
And after a few fits and starts, that was it.
I don’t know Jon all that well. He’s just a friendly, well-dressed veteran Marine who also lost his wife of 60 years, can and will carry on a conversation with anyone in his path, calls my granny Church Lady, and might even have as much energy as her.
I used to wonder, and maybe you did too, why older people date or get remarried. I am not certain—you’d have to ask Shirley—but I think it’s because she loves him and wants to spend the rest of her life with him.
Some other texts I’ve received:
Jon said I have to get rid of about half of my cookbooks
Told Jon about ordering a pink bedspread. He said Marines don’t sleep on pink beds.
Did it not bother me when my granny started palling around with some new man? Of course it did. He was the wrong man, not the one who goes in the space beside her. The first picture of them together felt preposterous. But I adjusted. He’s not the wrong man, because she chose him.
It’s part of the miracle, you see. She has life left to live, and she’s choosing what to do with it. And I think it’s gorgeous to see the two of them pouring their life, energy, time, and love into building a new life together when everything once seemed so broken and uprooted and unraveled. In short, they are not holding back. It’s a singular kind of hope and courage and joy, and seeing this is a gift to me, too.
What I know is I admire and love Shirley beyond reckoning, and I pray for every happiness on the occasion of her wedding.1
Shirley requested no wedding gifts, but appreciates donations to LightShine ministries or FaithWorks of the Inner City.
Wow!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
This is beautiful, Jenna!
Beautiful, Jenna