It was a broken heart that took my grandmother home. I have often wondered what caused her heart to break. My mother says it was many years of many small things that she held inside that eventually manifested as a blood clot in her heart. My mother says that my grandmother carried the sadness and loneliness that comes with growing older and losing many people who were dear to her heart, beginning with losing her own mother at the age of fourteen and her father years before that. She was the last living of her siblings. She went through losing two of her children, a granddaughter, many friends, and close loved ones including my grandfather just ten months before her passing.
My grandmother wasn’t a perfect woman. She was a real woman. She was an authentic woman. I called her My Beautiful. Whatever she did, she did with her entire heart. She had a true love for being kind and generous, and she knew in her bones how to take care of people. As a child, I didn’t always appreciate that. As an adult I was willing to give her anything to show my appreciation for it. I made sure to give her all that I could. I felt she deserved so much more because of how much I saw her give of herself to others. She didn’t give because she wanted to be recognized. She didn’t give because she wanted to be praised. She gave because when she saw a need, she looked within to see if she was being called to serve by helping one of God’s creations and she was obedient to that internal call.
I am grateful that I was able to honor her and give her gifts of flowers while she could smell them. I am grateful that I was able to appreciate the many ways in which she gave to me. I am grateful that I was old enough to understand that she was a person, a woman, a wife, a mother and past her frustrations and inner turmoil, there was deep love. I am grateful that I understood that she wanted to be proud of me. She wanted to be able to live in me and through me, knowing that her words and her love, which was imparted to me, would be with me eternally even if her body could not be. I wasn’t an easy child to raise, often feeling misplaced and longing for the presence of my mother and father, but I also know that I was not difficult for her. In her eyes and heart, I was her baby, her very first grandchild and granddaughter born to her first daughter.
I remember sitting by her bedside as she was transitioning to the realm of ancestors. From the moment I walked into her hospital room until the moment she took her last breath at home, she did not want me to leave her side, and by her side I stayed. She had physically become so frail, yet she felt stronger and more empowered than I ever remember. She spoke with such authority, purpose, clarity, and love. Her final days on this earth she spent pouring all she had left to give into her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Since she has returned to her heavenly home, as the years pass, I continue to look for ways to honor her. I listen out for her voice as a source of wisdom. I look toward her example for guidance. I feel for her presence in my life. I know that she is with me, living in my spirit and my blood and bones, in my memory. I am so blessed to have shared life on this earth with and be raised by someone whose life was a living example of motherhood, generosity, ingenuity, and faithfulness.
Ifayinka 