She Will Always Be "My Favorite"

I'm a minimalist by nature. I'll take a few great friends over a group any day. I don't collect anything, hate "trinkets," keep a tidy house, and have a "spring cleaning" four times a year.

I greatly dislike hallmark cards (I think its a cop-out for true emotions), think people ruin pictures, and have a 99% success rate of not paying attention to your name when I am first introduced to you (I am busy registering a million other things about you to concentrate on your name).

Every so often I will scroll through my cell phone and read over the current list of names registered. Inevitably there will be three or four names that I have no idea who, what, when, where, and why I know them. My feeling is that if I can't match the name to a face within 15 seconds, you obviously can't be important enough to stay in my phone. This Saturday just so happened to be that type of day for a name erasing mission.

As I casually scrolled through the names, calculating the merits of our social dynamic, a name smacked me in the face and put a lump in my throat...

"Esta"

It's been two months to the day since my grandma passed away. Esther was her birth name, Mom was the name two her two children and spouses, Grandma was the name to three of her Grandchildren. But for me, and only me, her eyes lit up to Esta!

Twenty-three years ago I learned my first lesson about love and loss. I was at a Florida cemetery for my grandfather’s unveiling- a kid without a care in the world. I had no idea what was going on...I was only 5 at the time and had not placed any context to my grandfather being "gone." As I played on the mausoleum steps paces away from the burial plate, my father called me to come to him. As I paced over to him, I heard a sound emanating in the foreground that would stay with me for life. As I peered through the crowd, I joined the sound to my grandmother as my mother and uncle consoled her throughout the ceremony. To see such pain in my grandmother immediately caused me to cry tears all over my father's grey suit. I was not crying for the loss of my grandfather...I was crying for the pain of my grandma.

I couldn't love anyone more than I loved my grandfather. For many years I could not mention his name (Harry) or be in the same room with people who talked about him. The worst was when people would tell me how much I looked like him- that would just kill me. Partly because I missed him so much, partly because of the memory of my grandma's pain.

I often sensed she saw flashes of him when she looked at me. She lived with a broken heart for 23 years. Sure she had friends to play with and a nice "companion" at one point, but no one could ever replace Harry. For many years I have felt a responsibility to distract and protect her as much as possible from the loneliness, with phone calls, visits, hugs, and kisses.

Esther was 86 years old. She lived a full life. She got to see weddings, graduations, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. While I selfishly wished to have her in my "physical" life forever, her passing somehow comforted me. To see her buried next to her love, somehow healed a wound inside of me created at the very same spot so many years earlier.

So while I uncomfortably deleted "Esta" from my list of names in my cell phone this weekend, I have comforted myself with the knowledge that while names can easily be erased from your phone, some names can never be erased from your heart...