I just sent some photos to my aunt via email and for just a flash, I thought of sending them to my grandmother, too. However, my grandmother has been gone for over five years now, and I do not have an email address for her in her heaven. The inspiration reminds me of the last six months I spent in the house that Jeff and I had shared. At least once an evening the computer printer would spontaneously pull up a blank sheet of paper from the tray and run it through the rollers, leaving no marks. At first I would check the paper, hoping against all logic for a message from Jeff. Silly, I know, but the computer and printer were such a part of our lives those last years that it somehow seemed plausible. He wrote his papers for school on that computer before the headache necessitated his withdrawal from the program. I sent my nightly missives beginning with his first hospitalization, continuing even beyond that day in April when he finally left us. Kate learned to talk, and count, and spell thanks to the computer's endless patience and consistent repetition. I waited for a hard copy from Jeff for several years, even after I had bought a new printer. I do not think I would be surprised if one actually did appear someday. What a story that could become.
It would be wonderful to have an email address to God. I'd have a whole series of daily items for which to thank Her, many questions to ask, and the occasional complaint to register. I'd also want to let Nana and Papa know that I think of them daily and to tell Lenny what fine young women his daughters have become. I want to say "hi" to Uncle Stan.
I desperately want to tell Jeff how beautiful Kate has grown, and how Dana, Kim, and I have done our very best to care for her. I want to hear him say that it
was the best thing to move her to a board and care home and for me to abandon my career, and that it was okay for me to take the last few years to attempt to heal and begin again. I want to let him know that the seizures have gotten worse, and I want to cry with him over the real possibility of Kate joining him long before I do. I want to tell him how his mom has stayed in touch with me even though she's had a stroke, and how Kate's other grandparents have welcomed me into the family after all the other relatives turned their backs. I want to send him a message, and get his quick reciprocal response, about my unending love for him and about how much I miss Us. Ten years is a long time with no correspondence, no arm on my shoulder, no joyful, sweaty lovemaking, no foot at the end of the bed.
I will instead continue to send photos to my aunties, to my siblings, to my mother-in-law, to my dad and Karen, and to grab every hug and kiss I can get from my daughters, my friends, and my extended family. As I sit every day watching the sky spreading out over the bay, the mountains, and the ocean, I continue to feel that just as I can send a message to an acquaintance in Indonesia, I can somehow get my hands on the address of the server in heaven ;-) Then no one would rest in peace, would they?
