Carried on: In the Heart of her Hand

The following essay by Ann Ritter is one of those experiences whose memory stays with you for life.  
The details speak for themselves. Enjoy....

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Travel

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by Ann Ritter

My grandmother died with my name in her hand.

The heart attack hit at the counter of an ordinary motel café. It was an August morning; she was traveling home from a visit to family in coastal Virginia. Later that day, she would have arrived with gifts for all of us: plastic name-tag pins. 

One year before, she and I each took our first plane trip. Mine was to New York with my parents, hers to Texas to see her oldest living grandchild graduate from college. I asked her if she was afraid of flying, to be so high off the ground. She said, no, she was excited to try something new. I told her I was petrified. Her flight was smooth and full of sunshine, mine plagued by storm winds, lightning, and repeated circling of the airport before we could land. I was afraid the plane would run out of gas.  

Soon after our trips, I began fifth grade. I learned of Icarus and wrote a report on Pompeii—ordinary people caught and held forever in their last actions by volcanic ash.

 

Grandmother had risen from breakfast, as usual a little short of breath. With coin purse in hand, she arrived at the counter and saw the display. To the sales clerk, she praised the motel’s grits for its lack of lumps as she pulled each name from the revolving rack. She had just reached Ann with no “e.” A sharp pain took her breath, turned her lips blue, sent her body to the floor like a stone. The medics uncurled her fingers to see the red pin resting just so. Ann.

“You didn’t ask her to come with you if you didn’t mean it,” said the niece who accompanied her on that last trip. “She would say, ‘Just give me an hour to pack.’”

At 78, Grandmother had never learned to drive. But she loved to go, and because of this, was “sought after” by many of us as a traveling companion.

“I thought she would live forever,” the niece said.

So did I. To this day, I miss her, still.

I always will be uneasy in the air. But fear will not keep me at home. I am propelled by Grandmother’s last image she saw in her mortal life:  Ann.

I journey to Peru, Ireland’s West coast, the Olympic Peninsula, California, the deserts of New Mexico. On every day, through each place, I travel with her heart. 

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Essay, copyright Ann Ritter, all rights reserved. 

To see more of Ann's work:

Keen

Miriam's Wake

    

When the Circle Breaks Open

Many readers of this blog will have heard the old gospel tune, "May the Circle Be Unbroken." And many of this blog's readers have lived through the tearing apart of our sacred circles. This experience is, I believe, particularly recognizable in the loss of a sibling. Ann Ritter's poem does a remarkable job of capturing that moment when siblings confront the breaking of that circle. Her artistry with the language brings "salve" to the moment and its pain. I've paired her poem with Jeff Damron's photo, "White Chair." When I asked Jeff's permission to post the photo, I learned that the white chair pictured is "keeping watch" in his brother's yard. He took the photo of the chair just a few months before his brother Steve died in 2011.

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White Chair by Jeff Damron. All rights reserved.

Miriam’s Wake

 

by Ann Ritter

 

Five white chairs wait in a circle

around a perfect green watermelon

and a knife, for the brothers, who,

plus one cousin, will carry her coffin.

Tonight when crickets sing, William,

the eldest, will cut the sweet fruit,

pass slices to John, Wendall, Kenny,

baby Ralph. And stories will run

like juice from their lips.

They will remember the strained summer         

of polio—how the grass grew long

in their parents’ absence from home

and Miriam’s damp hair tangled so

in her hospital bed that it had to be cut off.

In the yard, rust stained her waiting bicycle,

because no one wanted to touch it.

They will remember how her crooked hips

showed in two graduation photos and

through the lace of her wedding dress.

One brother will compare to spider web

the shatter imprint on the windshield

made by Miriam’s head. Another

will repeat the patrolman’s report

of the dozing man whose car struck hers,

who lived for a time on the stretcher to say,

“I killed her; I know that poor lady died.”

As they cinch chairs a bit tighter, knit over

the hole in the family that was Miriam,

silence will fall on the circle, will be broken

only by black seeds shot

like torpedoes

into the sand behind them in the dark.

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Poem copyright Ann Ritter, all rights reserved.
Read Ann Ritter's bio at the end of the previous post.
Learn about Jeff Damron's work at Better in Black and White.