I Carry Them in My Heart

My grandmother died in 1979, and I've missed her every day since then. She was a pure light in my life, troubled and sad and problematic, but her heart and her love were always pure, almost holy. She was unwavering in her love for me, completely unconditional and unselfish. She was never angry with me, never in a hurry, never temperamental or judgmental or unkind. Never. I can't imagine a more gentle heart than hers. She lit up when she met me at the door after school, always interested in what I had to say, and content to sit and hold my hand and talk about the olden days. She was never too tired to play a game with me or to hear me talk. I was a comfort to her, and she made me feel that I was always just right in her eyes. In my uncertain world of fair-weather friends and a distracted, frustrated mother, my grandmother's love for me was a certainty. I couldn't always be certain of her stability; she had mental and emotional problems, and constant leg pain and depression clouded her days. But even in her pain, physical or psychological, she was never unkind, always forgiving, ever loving.

When I was nine years old, my grandmother had a nervous breakdown. In trying to understand why her beloved mother had fallen apart psychologically, and in trying to figure out the basis for her own fears and troubles, my mother took a year off from teaching and earned a master's degree in counseling. Her thesis was a study of her mother's psychological life. She interviewed her father and sister and even herself, and put together what she could of the history of my grandmother's depressions, fears, and occasional breaks with reality. She taped these interviews and, after she died in 2001, I found a tape of my mother interviewing my grandfather in early 1973. I was thrilled to have it, but too afraid to listen to it. The idea of hearing my mother's inquisitive, professional tones on tape felt like too much to bear, and imagining my grandfather with his anger, vulgarity, spite, bitterness, brittleness, and self-absorption lashing out at my grandmother and swearing about how she had let him down, when in my heart I knew his seething anger and belittling of her are what broke her spirit in the first place, seemed too cruel a strike against my grandmother's memory. So I preserved it but did not listen to it.

Around the same time, I found an even more important jewel: an audiotape of me at age 12 or 13 interviewing my grandmother about her memories of her youth which I made for a school folklore assignment. Bless the teacher who made students interview someone about his or her personal history, for it inspired one of my most precious possessions. I finally had the strength to listen to my tape recently, and it was wonderful. I had set it aside for years, too, but I finally listened to it and made a copy of it in January.

My grandmother had loved telling me stories about her childhood for as far back as I could remember. I was the grandchild who loved those stories the most; I would ask over and over again to hear about the time she went berrypicking, disturbed a wasps' nest, and got stung all over her body, barely surviving. I wanted to hear about her Finnish grandfather's purchase of famous race horses, even when his family was strapped for cash and living through winter on little more than potatoes. I liked learning about the igloos neighbor boys would build during harsh Northern Michigan winters, and about how the girls would brew great pots of coffee and carry them into the igloos to enjoy with the boys when building was done. Grandma's stories about all the locals sharing a communal sauna, men and women and boys and girls all happily naked together, scraping their skins with birch bark, tossing water onto the coals to make the steam, and running out into the snow to dive through a hole cut in the ice over the river to cool down after a long steambath were so fresh, seventy years later. I loved hearing her sing Finnish folksongs and telling me about her family, and she loved nothing more than sharing her memories with me. Her treatments for her mental illness had left her with little short-term memory, but she remembered her childhood as clearly as if she were still young, and living in those times again in her memory and taking her beloved granddaughter with her gave her one of the greatest joys of her old age.

Last month I finally felt I had the strength to sit down with the old cassette and listen to my grandmother again. I feared the tape would stretch or that it would be unintelligible after all this time, that she wouldn't sound as I remembered, or that the sound of my young voice would embarrass me. I worried that hearing us together would bring forth once again the horrible sense of loss I felt when she died. But I put the tape in my old dubbing tape deck and, as I dubbed it to a fresh tape so I could have a backup in case the original failed me, I sat by the speakers and listened. The sound quality was scratchy and I had to turn the volume up to hear our voices, but I was shocked to hear how much like my current self I sounded. It was wonderful to hear my grandmother's gentle little voice, and I was delighted to hear how natural our conversation was, how enthusiastic we both were, and how clear and correct my memories of my grandmother were. We were as close and comfortable with each other as I remembered, and her stories were sweet and interesting, as I've always remembered them. And while I cried and shook my head as I heard her speak, and I did feel a flood of sadness and loss, mostly what I felt was wonderment that this terrific invention, the cassette tape, gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in my grandmother's stories and company again.

I listened to the tape of my grandfather and mother again. Not all of it; I haven't been able to listen to all of my grandmother's tape yet, either. Both take a lot of emotional energy and focus. But my grandfather's tape was also a wonderful gift. He was as harsh, self-pitying, unkind, and angry as I remembered him, and I can't imagine how my dear grandmother with her sensitive ways could stand to live with him for so long. My mother was also true to form: curious, enthusiastic, articulate, speaking directly to him but also adjusting her questions and showing more empathy toward him than I anticipated in order to try to break through his defenses enough to learn more about what made her family the way it was. I admired her courage in facing him, for he always made it clear that she was never the favorite, and that he felt everyone and everything beneath him in some way, and she felt understanding him and her mother was more important than her discomfort in dealing with him. Later in life facing that sort of anger was beyond her strength—she feared it too much to work through it, and hearing him speak with her, I understood better where that fear had come from, and how hard it must have been to have such a tender, broken mother and such a bitter, insulting father, and to try to look out for herself without dominating and squashing those around her. She adored her mother and felt the anger of her father all her life, but also saw how much more success her father's attitude had in the world than her mother's did, and I think the clash of outlooks and behaviors always caused painful internal battles in her, and kept her from engaging with others as completely and healthily as she desperately wanted to.

Instead of feeling the huge gap and sadness over the losses of my mother and grandmother anew after hearing these tapes, I felt closer to them again. I felt sorry for my mother's struggles to understand and stand up to her father, and admired her desire to understand and be loving toward her parents despite their difficulties. Best of all, the many years since my grandmother died disappeared for a little while, and the comfort of her company lingered. I suddenly felt she wasn't so far away and hadn't been gone so long. Not only did the hearing of her voice and remembering the stories make me feel this closeness, but the pleasure of knowing how well I'd preserved her memory in my heart gave me great comfort. We really do carry those we love with us in our hearts; they do live on; they aren't so far away.