Bookends

Grandie died early Sunday morning. 

They made sure my grannie was by his side, holding his hand, as she has been for the past three weeks, or really, for the past 68 years.

Hard to believe those two have been married since she was 18 years old. 

BT and I talked the other day, after he died, about the fact that after almost 5 years, we can't imagine life without the other.  Let alone 68 years.  Twice the time I've been on this earth....

So I drove up to Memphis Monday morning.  A friend of mine texted me, saying, just like many have, how they cannot WAIT for the new year for us.  I wrote her back saying that I just had to think that maybe this was a bookend.  In a house full of books like my grandparents', it somehow seemed appropriate.

A bookend to a year of loss, a year of growth, a year of realization that all does not always go as we planned.  That our plans are not our own, and that sometimes we just have to accept the fact that we have zero control, and be okay with it. 

The art of letting go...

I've grown up around the serenity prayer.  At least since I was eleven.  And in a year like this, I still find it surprising to thank God for changing my family so many years ago, for the better, for showing us how grace does in fact suffice, and how we are totally okay in giving things up to something bigger and better than ourselves. 

I don't know if we all could have gotten through this year if God hadn't done work on each and every one of us a long, long time ago....

Most folks know the main part of the serenity prayer.  The one that's repeated all over the world every day.  But many don't know the rest.  The part that, I think, holds even more power and gives the most peace:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.


Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

We have high hopes for 2012. 
We've been saying many prayers. 

But as we all know well enough now, it's not up to us. 

A little scary, a lot freeing. 

So we said goodbye to a man yesterday.  A man of importance to all of us.  He married the love of his life sixty-eight years ago.  He parachuted with the 101st airborne division into the beaches of normandy.  He got trenchfoot from the Battle of Bastogne.  He liberated the concentration camps, and to his last day, could still smell the stench of those evil places.  He used to chew tobacco until he finally gave it up when I was younger.  He once got out of a ticket on the way from Memphis to Mobile by charming the police officer with pictures of his grandchildren.  He prayed and prayed and prayed, and in his last days, told my dad he didn't know why he just couldn't get through that door....

He got through the door Sunday morning. 
I for one think it's appropriate it happened on a Sunday.

So before I left their house yesterday, I got a set of bookends from his house of books. 

To commemorate the year. 
Of loss.
Of pain.
Of laughter.
Of joy.

A bookend. 

A beginning.

And end.

And a beautiful middle.