i wanted to give a eulogy at my grandmother’s memorial service, but in the short notice i had (from my arrival in panama on wednesday afternoon until the service on thursday evening), i could not find the words.

though this won’t be a eulogy, it will be my thoughts in some sort of way. the word eulogy comes from the greek, meaning a good word or speech. obviously this isn’t a speech, but i do hope my words are good.

my grandmother was a woman of strength, a woman to be admired in that. she was educated, and a working woman in a time when that was rare. it is said that she handled herself well in a male-dominated workforce.

her own mother died when she was only four. perhaps it was this loss, or having been raised by a couple of aunts instead of her own father, or something else, that gave her this strength.

unfortunately, she never learned to put that strength aside for the sake of becoming warm or affectionate, thereby remaining someone that was hard to get close to.

she was difficult in many ways. with her strength came stubbornness, that made it difficult for many people, particularly those as stubborn as she – such as my mom and me – to be close to her.

she was a woman very concerned with proper manners. i fear that i have always failed her in that sense. i have never dressed properly enough for her. i have never been girly enough. i have never been feminine enough. i’d still rather wear jeans than dresses. i’ve never quite been able to cross my legs properly. though i do know which fork is which at the table, what to do with a napkin when i’m finished using it or when i get up from my seat, and to never speak with my mouth full. i know not to reach across the table and to always say please and thank you (whether i always do these things is a different matter).

i spent all of my summers in junior high and high school living with her in panama. she connected me to my homeland. she taught me a lot during that time, though i believe i’m only beginning to see how much.

my grandmother had breast cancer years ago, which was treated successfully.

at the time of our wedding, seven and a half years ago, the cancer returned and metastasized into her bones, eating them up and leaving them full of holes, like sponges. through these seven plus years, she went through every cancer treatment possible, exhausting them all. she lost her hair for a time. she was in much pain. she aged significantly. but she went through this all with much strength and grace. in all those years, it was only in this past year that her health truly began to decline.

she always seemed younger than her age. even in her eighties people thought she was in her sixties. so it was only really in her nineties that she seemed elderly at all.

she feared death. and she certainly held on to life, living past her 95th birthday. as my mom put it, the only way she would be willing to go was if life became just uncomfortable enough for her to not want to withstand it any longer. thankfully, she didn’t move past that into a point of much suffering.

i can’t help but believe that her fear of death had much to do with her avoidance of spirituality. she was jewish, though never one to practice the faith she was born into. from what i learned this past week, it seems that her response to the difficulty of being jewish in her day and age caused her to move away from her religion (her sister on the other hand, embraces it whole-heartedly). in some ways it seemed odd on thursday night to sit in a synagogue for her memorial service knowing that she would hardly have stepped foot in that place herself. it seems as if my mom as a catholic, and i as a mostly-protestant, have carried on her judaism more than she ever could, through the ways each of us personally believe and live out our faith.

she was a woman of strength to be reckoned with. a lover of life to be admired. the matriarch of our family. a solid connection to my home in panama. and one who will be sorely missed, even by those of us who struggled in our relationship to her.

i regret now how little i let myself know her. i regret not listening to her stories. i regret not making a greater effort to express warmth and affection to a woman who needed it by virtue of not knowing how to give those herself. i regret not spending more time with her when we were with each other.

but i am thankful that i had those summers with her. i am thankful that we had the last several christmases together (even while sick and in her nineties, she kept coming up to the states for the holidays). i am thankful for who she was, even in the ways she was difficult for me. and i am thankful for what i learned from her.

so this post is in loving memory of Audrey Eisenmann Kline
(August 24, 1911 – November 25, 2006).

i haven’t been blogging much. i’ve had too much going on in my life to worry about something like blogging.

thanksgiving night, our water heater broke, setting off an alarm in the middle of the night and leaving us without hot water for a couple of days.

later that weekend, from sunday to monday, it snowed. it doesn’t snow in seattle. seattle doesn’t know how to handle snow. a mere few inches of snow paralyzed the city. my usual 45 minute drive home from school took me six hours on monday night. six hours. a week later, i still can’t believe it.

in between those two things, my grandmother passed away. she’s been sick, and we all knew it was coming, but even that never makes death easy.

of course, my passport had expired. i desperately wanted to be there for the memorial service, so i had my passport expedited so Jak and i could go to panama on tuesday to be there for the service on thursday night.

i picked up my passport tuesday morning, we got on the plane that night, and arrived in panama on wednesday afternoon. we were only there for a few days, before spending all day saturday traveling back here to seattle.

it was a hectic week or so, to say the least.

now, as i sit here procrastinating on my studies, i find i have so much more to say, about my grandmother, about our relationship, about life and death, about grief. . . all while knowing that i have many pages to read and several papers to write before my semester ends in a week and half.

so instead of lengthening this post, i’ll keep those thoughts for another time.

what is it that gives a place a sense of “home” for us? is it the relationships to the people there? is it our history in that location? is it the smell of cookies baking, or the aroma of some other comfort food? does it relate to the memorable events or life transitions that took place there? is it a matter of memories or something a little more solid? is it rooted only in the past, or do the present and future play a role as well? is it a place we associate with a certain time – our childhood or adolescence – or is it something that transcends time?

as believers, we know that we are aliens and strangers, that this world is not our home. yet, we are graciously given glimpses of what home is like through the places that we experience as home while we wander on this earth. our journey through life is often marked with a variety of places that we call home for myriad reasons.

so as i long for my heavenly home, knowing that no home here is perfect or permanent, i’m also in the midst of grieving all the homes i’ve ever known.

we often lose the places we call “home.” that can occur because of tragedies or disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, etc.). we can lose them over the death of someone who made a place home for us. for some, it’s as simple as having their childhood home sold as their parents move along to another place.

i’ve found myself, all at once, to be losing all the places i’ve known as home. though i know that there is a better place than this planet that is truly home, i am also in a place of grief as i realize that i’m losing so much at once.

i’ve recently moved from boston (my favorite city), which has always felt like home, to a seattle. i’ve learned that as my relationship with my family changes, the place where i grew up is less and less my home (which i guess is the way it’s supposed to be, as in marriage we’re supposed to leave our family and stick to our spouse). in the midst of this, i’m facing the immanent death of my grandmother, who right now feels like my most solid tie to my country of origin.

the loss of these three at once seems incomprehensibly huge to me right now.

yet, i know that my hope lies in a greater home than all these. i’m not good at remembering this part of the equation though. it’s easy to feel discomfort in this life, but hard to remember what we’re promised for our future.

and i know that home is more than these physical places. there are people, few and far between, that are also “home” for me, regardless of their physical location. a few friends scattered around the country who’s presence (even when relegated to phone calls) brings me home. and of course, i have Jak, who – regardless of what roof is over our head at any given time – is my earthly home.

and i guess this is where i must find my rest right now. in the midst of my grief, i’ll seek rest in those who make this world a little more “homey,” and in the hope for a better home in the future.