
mitch albom’s first book, tuesdays with morrie , had topped out the must-read charts back in 2002, wildly popular with just about everybody. but i didn’t read it. i knew i had plenty on my post-mastectomy emotional plate without having to ponder the bittersweet ending of that story. oddly enough, my surgeon’s name was also morrie and almost every single appointment i had with him during those months was on a tuesday. probably i just should have read the book, i spent so much time thinking about why i wasn’t going to read it.
mitch’s second book came out just last month, and this time i was immediately drawn to have a little faith. so last week i picked up a copy to take with me to california. and i couldn’t put it down.
between the front and back covers three life stories ~ an inner city pastor, the lifelong family rabbi, and the author’s own ~ are loosely swirled together along an incredible faith marathon that left me wishing with all my heart i could have known a rabbi named albert lewis – “reb”.
in case you want to read it i won’t give anything away, but near the end of the book the author asks you to think back over your own life to see who has faithfully pointed the way to God in a way that truly changed you.
my first thought was ‘goodness, there have been so many‘. but a moment later the person whose name leapt up and hung suspended was my beloved grandma. and when it did i dissolved into tears, missing until i ached the twinkle in her eye and the touch of her hand. grandma left us to be with Jesus two years ago in june at the age of 101-1/2.
for most of her life margaret cross was known as “marge”. for all 51 years of my life she was simply “gram” to me.
my earliest recollections of my grandma were watching her stand over her soup pot, apron tied behind her back, perpetually preparing some delicious something (or sometimes saurkraut ~ not so delicious to me) ahead of time to have ready for whoever might gather around her lunch or supper table that day.
her famous chocolate chip cookies grew overnight in that great round tin of hers, i just knew it. i never saw her bake them but it was always, always full. and the only time i ever saw gram sit down during the day was at her kitchen table, coffee cup in hand, munching on one of those cookies. ” – ahh!” she’d sigh, contentedly, after every sip. you know, it’s strange. that tin sits in my own kitchen today and nothing ever grows in it anymore.
grandma’s house had huge cherry trees towering over her backyard, and there were plum trees, too, growing beside a meticulously tended vegetable garden. but her pride and joy was the rose garden. there was nothing in all the world my grandma loved more than “puttering” in her garden. i suspect she and the Lord knew each other so well because they talked for so many hours out there every week while she pulled weeds and pruned wandering branches. her pantry shelves bulged with row upon colorful row of peaches, pears, cherries, and the like, and if i ever ate fruit from a grocer’s tin can back then i can’t recall.
as a little girl i don’t remember my grandma ever talking openly about the Lord. i don’t remember her talking about much of anything, actually. she mostly kept her thoughts to herself. day in, day out, week in, week out, she was just there … quietly standing, stirring, canning, baking for grandpa and her family in the warm, cozy center of her house ~ her kitchen. through the eyes of her granddaughter it was an idyllic way to live.
i do remember her prayers. when gram spoke to God her voice took on a low, hushed reverence and the words of thanks tumbled out from her heart to His like a lullaby. then she would pause and nearly whisper “ahhh-men”, revealing the dear german heritage that is also half mine.
i was in college the first time i actually remember sitting down to have a conversation with my grandma, just her and me. one morning just a few years before grandpa had dropped dead of a heart attack in their back yard ~ she’d looked out the back window to see him lying in the grass. when she called to tell us what had just happened gram’s voice sounded odd, but she never let on to me that anything was wrong. i was sixteen. we raced to their house where i marveled to watch a woman so divinely held with a deep abiding peace while the coroner carried her husband’s body around the house and away forever. i’ve never forgotten that.
after i graduated and moved fifty miles north with my new husband i found myself carving an hour from more and more of my trips to seattle to knock on gram’s door and let her heat me up a bowl of her homemade soup for lunch. she never tired of hearing what was new with me and i never, ever tired of the way time stood still around her table.
but it wasn’t until she was beyond 95 years old (imagine that!) , her legs finally failing her, that i got to hear my grandma’s story from beginning to end. and that’s when i discovered it wasn’t idyllic at all. it had been hard. hard on every level, and in all the private, unresolved corners of life i would never have suspected.
but walking with God she had persevered. she was bruised but not broken. gracious but genuine, and honest, and sometimes the pain still smarted out loud. but we talked, hour after hour, visit upon visit, about the faithfulness of her Savior – our Savior – and the grace and the strength she found in Him that she clung to, now more than ever, but just like always before. and when she asked me to do the same, i said i would, and i did. because i knew that between our visits together she was praying for me. praying for all of us.
then one morning it was time for the Lord to walk her home. without any fanfare she closed her eyes and finished well. my grandma’s legacy isn’t marked by any particularly impressive moments or events. other than in her handwritten recipes and in the front of her Bible you won’t find her name or her memoirs. gram was not eloquent. in fact, she rarely even offered me advice or solutions when life turned sideways, but i never left her side without feeling a sense of reassurance that things would somehow work out alright. gram lived over a century of trusting perseverence, and that’s impressive ~ faithfully pointing the way to God in a way that truly changed all of us. changed me. 
i wish you were still with us, gram. i wish you could take my hand when life goes sideways and remind me without words that it will all work out. that God will keep His strong hand on me and that the long faithful walk of perseverence is still worth it. i’m so glad for the promise that i’ll see you again.
thanks, mitch albom, for nudging my treasured memories into print. and i think i’ll read your first book next.