Losing Home

What happens when you lose home?  For nearly 70 years my grandparents (Jacket and Bettymimi, or Jack and Betty) were each other's solace.  No matter what changes came their way, they had each other.

In the beginning

My grandfather loved telling the story of how they met. (In fact, while I was at home for his funeral I watched a video of him telling the story with so much vigor that he seemed to resurrect in my mind.) Jacket had just come back from World War II and was invited to a young adult event at his childhood church.  When he got there all the women were wearing pants.  "There was one beautiful young woman who stood apart from the rest." Across the yard he could see this lovely young lady in a dress.  She was a “sight for sore eyes” - a brunette in a sea of blonds. He would say, "the rest of the people at the picnic looked like kids, boys and girls, but not this young lady, she was all woman”. Jack walked up to Betty and said, "My name is Jack, I just got back from the war. I haven't met you before." Betty in her snappy way said, "Jack, I know who you are," and walked away without giving her name. By the end of the youth event Jack had secured her name and a date for the next day. 11 months later they were married.  What I love most about this story is that my grandfather had another date that day...with the young girl his mother wanted him to marry.  While he was away at war she had been working on arranging as much as she could.  But love had another destiny.  

Strong boats weather storms.

My grandmother was strong.  She was drop-dead gorgeous and from the “wrong side of the tracks”.  She was an adopted daughter of a profoundly poor family.  During the depression she would climb into rail cars and take the paper lining off the walls for insulation for her family home.  Being from a large poor family had made her resourceful.  No matter the situation, Betty could find a resolution.  This was a skill that became significantly useful in her seventy year marriage to a husband who didn't know how to say "no" to save himself.  

Together Jack and Betty could face anything.  In the early days of their marriage when my grandmother cut her hair short, she would often be asked not to enter a church.  My grandfather and grandmother would turn around and exit the same door they entered.  Jacket would say "It's both of us or none of us."

Every cockamamie idea my grandfather created in his head my grandmother would help carry to fruition. From housing short term missionaries in their own home, like a bed and breakfast, to leading vacation Bible schools with over 400 native children. If Jacket asked her to take part she always gave it her all.  

Beyond all the mission projects, Betty ran the house. Three square meals (even if they weren't tasty), homemade clothes, housekeeping, raising three rambunctious boys, endless dishes and dirty clothes, entertaining the multitudes, cleaning up after my grandfather's messes, Betty was the bedrock.  

Over the course of 70 years she faced brain cancer, breast and ovarian cancer, a full mastectomy, and hysterectomy, the loss of child, endless moves, and she did all of this with a grace that never ceased. (Sure, she could be a hard ass, curt, and opinionated, a lousy cook and mediocre house cleaner, but those cracks in the armor made her all the more beautiful.) Together the two of them could weather any storm. After seventy years in each other's care no matter what reservation, island, house, road trip, or missionary journey they were on, they had become each other's home.

Losing everything but home.

About 7 years ago my grandmother was possessed by a demon. (I don't actually believe in demons, but this is as close to a demon as I've ever seen) Betty started losing things. Loss of direction, loss of memories, loss of the ability to cook, or clean.  (Those things seemed innocent enough, besides she hated doing the last two anyway) As things grew worse she would forget to wash clothes, to make any meals, to even turn off the oven or the burners.  No matter how much my grandfather tried to hold things together, the house around them was falling apart, and his will was growing weak.  The demon had a name - my grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 Alzheimer's disease. As she lost more and more, it became apparent to their children that they needed to take action. Thank God for my parents who stepped in and made the choice to surround them with care in their final days.

For the last three years in the assisted living center where Jack and Betty lived, they learned to live without all the stuff they had collected for 70 years.  The learned how to lean even more heavily into what really matters in life: love, family, faith, and friendship.  They again made their house in a new land, because they still had each other.  

As my grandfather slipped further and further into the new land of the life to come, Betty would retreat more and more.  She knew something was happening. On good days she would even ask if Jacket was dying, only to forget again later.  Imagine living through the death of your true love again and again as if it were the first time.  It's like the Groundhog Day of hell.

No more tethers

This week as I said my final goodbyes to my grandfather and celebrated a life well lived, I was struck with one question: What happens when you lose the one thing that tethers you to this earth?*  Last week my grandmother who has lost her memories, her freedom, her house, has now lost the one thing that kept her grounded to this world. It was my grandfather who helped her know how to keep going and make sense of the randomness of life that the demon of no memory creates.  As I held Bettymimi's hand and rubbed the fingers of her beautiful shell, my heart felt a new breaking.   As I saw my granddad in his casket, it wasn't him.  He was sixty pounds skinnier than he ever had been, emaciated, and empty.  His body was an empty vessel.  When I saw my grandmother in her matching recliners, I saw a person trapped inside a vessel with no way out. The glimmer in her eye was still there, the love was still there, but it was a disconnected love. Seeing a person who is lost inside themselves with no way out, is more difficult than seeing a corpse where you know that person has left and is free.

Redefining home

Home is not a place.  Home is not a building we work our lives to build. Home is not even our memories.  What I learned anew, as I visited my family, is that HOME is the love we share over the course of our lives.  HOME is the love that holds us together in the darkness. When we find ourselves houseless, there seems no options for a better day.  But what happens when we find ourselves homeless?  

*(My dad is another faithful tether for Bettymimi.  I cannot thank him enough for his love for his parents, our family, and for his faithful example of what it means to be a home builder)