Halfway to heaven. My great-grandma Mitchell's story has sustained me through some dark times. I called her Grandma when she lived with us. I imagined she was as old as God and could go to heaven any time. Her room was on the second floor, at the top of a tall set of stairs, and I felt sure it was halfway to heaven. I remember it well - everything was pristine white like the angels. Grandma crocheted in white, and the bedcover was lace, as were the curtains, the tablecloth, and the cushions. The windows, which met in the corner, overlooked the garden. From that distance my grandma could see her daughter tend to her garden each morning. I envisioned God watching us in the same way as we tend to our tasks.
Looking back on my childhood memories, Grandma seems to me to be a wonderful image for God. I think of her whenever I read the passage: "Like a hen gathers her chicks...." (Matt. 23: 36-38 )
My mother and her seven sisters love to tell Liza's story. They recall her as joyful, fun-loving, hard-working. Whenever she came, they all scattered as Grandma did all the work, singing Irish jigs and hymns all the while.
Everyone in Tomstown, Ont., where she lived then, called her Aunt Liza. She delivered most of the babies there and a number of her own. In winter, labouring women from miles out in the country would come as far as her little two-bedroom house in the village. If they couldn't make it further, they would labour there and she would birth their babies. There was only one bed, which she would share with her patient. Liza would comfort her through pain throughout the night.
- Trisha Mills, North Bay, Ont.
My grandfather began making bread late in life. I remember watching him working in his kitchen, carefully measuring the ingredients and deftly working the dough, in spite of having a few less fingers than most of us do. After the bread came out of the oven, he would ask in that gravelly voice of his, "Do you want some bread, Britt?" He called it "health bread" and it was heavy and dense and full of seeds and nuts.
I could not resist and we would sit together on stools pulled up to the breakfast counter, cupping steamy slices in our hands and breathing in the fragrance of all that goodness.
I do not know exactly what brought my grandfather into the kitchen to become a breadmaker. He was by times a proud man, stubborn and hard to get along with. A dyed-in-the-wool Republican, he delighted in sending my mother letters with Nixon stickers on them, which drove her crazy. He drove a hard bargain and expected a high return on his investments.
He kept a list of everyone in the family and how often they wrote, and documented what they gave to him on special occasions like birthdays. If ever one of us needed to borrow money, he would carefully keep account of the money owing, adding interest to all outstanding balances.
But then he began to make bread, and in the sifting and the sorting of ingredients, in the time and patience it took to nurture the dough to rise, in the warmth of the good smells coming out of the oven, and in the communion we shared at the counter in his kitchen, a different relationship began to emerge.
Today, whenever I am privileged to preside at communion I remember the transformative experience of sharing bread with my grandfather. He died the year I was finishing theological school, but the gift of grace in the bread he made will always span the gap between time and eternity which lies between us.
- Rev. Britt Jessen, Nanton, Alta.
