In Honor of My Grandmother, Mary McCarty Somerville

On this day, exactly one year since my Grandmother’s passing, I am going to take a moment to press through the pain and grief to honor her and my memory of her.

I wrote the first part of this 10 days before she passed, while I was visiting her in the hospital.

I sat there in a recliner on a Sunday afternoon just watching her breathe. Her lungs shimmied as they attempted to push air and oxygen through the cancer. And I frequently had to check her face to make sure she was still here with me. We weren’t saying anything–we didn’t need to. She apologized when I got there for not sitting up because she had just gotten comfortable. And it was then I felt released and knew she needed to be released too. I had attempted to make small talk up until that point, but now that she released me I told her I was just here to hang out with her and she better dare not move. “We’re introverts Grandma, we’ve got this.” She giggled. “Yes, yes we do.” And there we sat introverting–an hour going by before we spoke another word to each other. She was playing on her phone, and I was too until I noticed her breathing. It was then that I silently put my phone down and began praying over her. I prayed in tongues softly under my breath because I knew she couldn’t hear me anyways. She wasn’t completely deaf, but was still too proud to subscribe to the hearing aid club. So I knew I could get away with praying over her, though she wouldn’t have cared if she’d heard me anyways.

I was pregnant with my second child and had been up earlier that morning unable to sleep for a variety of reasons. Her fan was blowing directly on us and her room was just the right temperature for a nap. But I fought through the sleepiness and tried to stay in tune with what she might need. I also had to keep reminding myself that I was on the cancer floor and these people and hospital staff needed all the prayer they could get.

I flashed back to the day we found out. We had just moved back to Vermont and I was finally settling in and had been so grateful to be with my family again after 12 long years away. I naively looked forward to all the time I would get with my Grandmother and the rest of my family. Then she went to the doctor’s office because she had been sick and couldn’t get better. I could hardly believe the news.

You know that feeling you get when the wind gets knocked out of you? It’s the closest feeling I think a person can have to experiencing the reality of their humanity. That’s how I felt that day. And while I prayed for and with her, I knew in the pit of my stomach that God was saying it was her time to go Home.

My Grandmother and I had a very special relationship. We are pretty cut-and-dried people. She told me like it was. I told her like it was. We laughed, and then we didn’t talk for twenty minutes because the conversation drained us so much that we needed a quick recharge before we spoke again. Sometimes she made me angry. Sometimes I hurt her feelings. We forgave each other and we moved on. Because we understood each other. Every time I came home to visit, I snuggled up in a chair in her room and unloaded my life to her. She didn’t say much, but mmhmmed and uh-huhed so I knew she was listening and really hearing me. Her advice always went directly to my core, and sometimes I hated that, but most of the time I loved that. She was by no means a perfect woman, but she was the perfect grandmother for me. God made me a straight shooter, and I was most definitely cut from her cloth. When she looked in my eyes, we saw deep into each other. That sounds weird, but it wasn’t. It was very supernatural. I loved that she saw me in ways I sometimes didn’t even see myself.

She was mostly quiet, yet fierce. Loyal and loving. Proud and stubborn, as is customary when you’re Irish. And she’d never tell you — in fact, she never told me and I didn’t know until the day of her funeral — but she influenced so. Many. People. I never even knew that my quiet, introverted Grandmother knew so many people. The way God used that woman was incredibly inspiring, and I am happy and honored to live in the wake of and as part of her legacy.

When she was admitted to the hospital again and then into the ICU, I knew this was the end. I never told my family at the time, but about a week before she went, I asked Jesus if this was the end for her. I then felt this incredible peace wash over my body, and I had a vision of a clock–a grandfather clock just like the ones my Grandpa, her late husband, used to make. The hands were resting on 10 minutes to 7. And I knew right then that God was telling me that He was preparing to take her Home to be with Himself and with my Grandpa and my other family members that had passed. I grieved, of course, but I grieved with peace knowing that she would not suffer for much longer.

We all took turns going in to see her whenever we could. I wish you could have seen us. Her whole gigantic family taking up permanent residency on the ICU floor. We were there for so long–an eternity it felt like. We watched family after family come and go. Some left with smiles, others we watched get news that sent them to their knees, and we all sat solemnly praying for their hearts as they grieved.

I remember one night Aaron and I went in to see her. She was different. It was like she was frantically trying to say what she wanted to say to us before she left, and fighting through the pain and discomfort to do it. She was barely lucid, but she was still with us. She told me that she loved me, and she told Aaron that she loved him, and God bless us. I left the room and could hardly get out the door of the ICU before I was weeping. I told my family that I believed she just said, “Goodbye” to us–that she was giving us her final blessing. Those ended up being the last words my Grandmother really ever spoke to me.

The day to take her off the machines finally came. None of us wanted it. We weren’t ready. But she was. She had been fighting for so long and she was full of peace. Those of us that needed to be in the room with her were, and we gathered around her touching her and no longer hiding our tears from her. She looked around at each of us as we waited, as if to drink in the sights of us one last time. She loved her family so very, very much. But we prayed. And through the pain and agony and with a scratchy voice, I began singing her favorite song over her.

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul

It is well
With my soul
It is well, it is well with my soul”

Then someone pulled out a phone and they were playing her favorite hymns and we were all singing along. We were singing along to Amazing Grace — the Johnny Cash version — when she passed. We were all so focused on singing the hymn, that we didn’t even know it. The nurse came in and told us. The pain, the relief, the agony, the loss, it hit us all like a ton of bricks and suddenly we were faced with the reality: Mary McCarty Somerville is gone.

In between her passing and her memorial service, I had sweet Ephraim–in the same hospital. I had wanted to see her with him so badly. I wanted her to experience him as a tiny baby. I wanted him to meet his “Gug.” And the day we got out of the hospital, I visited my family at her house. I sat on the couch in her room and cried and cried and cried. The pain was overwhelming.

Her memorial service was perfect. Some in jeans and a Red Sox shirt — her favorite baseball team — and others felt it more appropriate to wear the traditional black. She would have understood and loved both sides of people. Aaron, my cousin Erin, and I all sang her favorite song, “It Is Well,” which I barely made it through. And then a slideshow of photos from her life played in the background. A lifetime of memories, lots of tears, and even more laughs (which she would have loved), and stories about who she was, and how she impacted lives. The church was full of people. And at the end we all sang her other favorite song. Buh, buh, buhs and all.

Happy 7th inning stretch, Grandma. I bet Heaven has a wicked good one. I miss you. I can’t wait to hang out on the couch in your room in Heaven. Tell Grandpa I said, “Hi.”

I love you,
Nikster