A Short Walk

My grandmothers last night.

A Short Walk

By Jay M. Jones

    In hindsight, it must have been a very short walk.  Even for woman pushing her mid eighties.  That night, it was very clear that something was going on.  In our infinite wisdom, however, we could not see it until it was all over.  A feeling of sweet relief came over the apartment and it’s inhabitants.  Something strong, and bright, overbearing, and perpetually right had faded out.  Like a light bulb that couldn’t be replaced because it required too much wattage.  In all of our haste in hurdling towards the inevitable, we did not stop to think about the moments after.  Mentally preparing yourself for death, even the death of someone else can be exhausting.  It’s an unspoken exhaustion.  One that cannot be verified, or rationalized.  Like the threads woven in between a tapestry.  They are there, we know they are there, only we’re too fixated on the events depicted in it to notice that these threads are what is holding the events in place.  From the vantage point of a child, even one as old as twenty the walk around that apartment seemed long, and arduous.  How it must have felt, to say good bye. How it must have felt to say good bye to people who did not realize they were being bid farewell.  Kind of like a silent wave of the hand prior to boarding a cruise ship.  

    It was right around midnight.  I was not home, as usual.  I was out amongst friends being a part of the city I loved so dearly.  There may have been a female or two involved, or perhaps three.  I arrived home at five in the morning, after the short walk had taken place.  It was my brother who gave me the first  bit of the puzzle.  The rest was collected by my other brother, and my parents.  By mid morning I had the whole picture.  In that two bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, Queens there lived six of us.  My brothers, who were 17, and 18 respectively.  My mother and father, me and my Grandmother.  I was 21 at the time.  Both my brothers, and my parents had the same story to tell.  “She peeked in last night, and asked me if I was going to be all right.”  Each member of our little household reacted differently to the passing of Mary C. Jones, the matriarch of my family for over twenty years.  The glue that held my funny little family together, and the bright thread that wove the tapestry of our clan in place.  I could remember thinking how lucky she was to have passed in her sleep.  Though it was heart failure that took her, she possessed a look on her face as though the arms of God himself had opened and wrapped her up in some manner of divine light.  She was found on her side, curled up over the covers.  I re-enacted what it must have been like the night before.  What it might have been like to know your next destination will be truly unknown.  To lie down with no intention of getting back up.  Closing your eyes, with no intention of opening them.  I remember thinking that she must have known it was her time.  She, of course, had taken that short walk around the apartment.  She stopped into the living room where my brothers slept and asked each of them if they were going to be all right.  Braved the cold hard ceramic floors of the kitchen to open the door to my parents room and ask them the same.  I wonder, in hindsight, if I would have had the where with all to piece together the intentions of this wise, wise woman, who was so in tune with herself she knew her last day of life was at hand had I been home that night.   

    It was Charlie who found her there.  It was he who first noticed.  He was the youngest of the three brothers.  A look of absolute surprise had stricken his face.  I’m not sure if his face ever reverted back to it’s original look fully.  To this day, you can still see a faint trace of that look in his face.  It corrodes his smile ever so slightly, like a ding on the bumper of a Porsche, that you  try to wax away.  Though you fix it, knowing it was there and how horrific you felt watching such a horrible thing happen to something so beautiful just creates a permanent indelible mark on your mind.  It is so that you can’t tell if the mark is really there, or if it truly is only in your mind.  Vincent, (the middle brother), was almost silent.  Tears could be seen, but they were quiet tears.  Personal tears.  His, and his alone, as was (and still is), his way.  It pained me to see him share them at all.  I remember thinking about the last time I had seen him cry.  I believe, we may have been in the midst of our pubescent years.  My mother was in shock.  It was a loud, and booming type of silence.  It cut across the room, and careened off the walls for day’s after her passing.  A subtle scream hidden under the weight of her breath.  It was my father, who was the most vocal.  

    They say a death in the family can bring a family closer together.  To some degree, I agree.  I would add also, however, that a death in the family can be a defining moment for each of it’s members.  The veil of pride is blown away by the winds of change, and what lies beneath it’s silk veneer lies everything that is raw and beautiful about the person who wore it.  “Why couldn’t it have been me?” he screamed.  Through the amiable lips of a broken man were uttered words so powerful, and shocking, I can remember them ten years later.  A booming testament to the intimately revealing properties of loss.  Years of resentment, and feelings of abandonment and never feeling up to par, put aside and swept to the curb of humility for a split second…long enough to echo a resounding statement of sacrifice.  My ears perked up, as tears within me welled up.  I saved them for later, as was my way.  I thought again about her short walk around the apartment.  

    Marianne Catherine Jones was a mysterious woman, an attractive woman, an intelligent woman.  During the era of the docile, and subservient wife, she resounded echoes of defiance in her every step.  Before woman’s lib was popular, she was a valkryie.  Society would not tell her who she was, nor would it dare to guide her steps.  She was worldly, and opinionated before being worldly and opinionated was something to aspire to for a young woman.  During the war, she served tours as a Medic.  She was doing the books at the Savoy when Jazz first gained a foothold on the night clubs of Harlem.  She donated her mind, and skills to the ushering in of a whole new Art Form in the greatest city on earth.  Where some men would beg at the doorstep of history to be a contributor, she neither begged nor accepted gracefully what history would graciously allow her to mercifully have.    She did not set out to receive, she set out to obtain.  It was this image of her that always resonated in my mind. It is what set her apart.   I realize, only now at 29 years of age that this what constitutes legacy.  That is to say, what you do in life is what defines how you will be remembered in death.  While some may be able to leave heirlooms, or stocks and bonds, she left us a vision of  what one woman, one human being can accomplish, even if that human being is given nothing to start with.  Abandoned in a tenement building in Harlem by Italian Immigrant parents, she was adopted by one of the families that resided there.  In hindsight, it was only on the rarest of occasions that she uttered even a single word about her childhood, or her mother.  On these rare occasions you could get a sense that she was raised to be proud.  Having been raised by an African American family, you also got the sense that this break from the conventional helped set the stage for her fringe outlook on life.  She grew up, the only white girl in Harlem, New York in the 1920’s, the blood daughter of Italian Immigrants, and the adoptive daughter of a poor African American family.  She took it upon herself to go to college, and study English.  By her mid-twenties, she had a column in a local newspaper.  

    It occurred to me, as I sat and reflected upon her life a few days after her passing, that all that time I was in the presence of someone who had done everything I wanted to do.   Someone who deviated from the norm.  Someone who drilled into the earth, and found oil with her bare hands, using her internal compass and nothing else to locate it.  I thought about what a stark contrast it was to the ornery old woman who took up a round the clock residence in her room, and prayed to the Virgin Mary whose statue graced her bedside table along with the Daily News.  To this day, if you were to enter into that room, you can sense she’s still there….reading the Newspaper, and doing the crossword puzzles glancing every few words at that statue.  But with every beat of her heart, and all she had accomplished, it was her ability to sacrifice that became her claim to fame.  That was her true legacy.  It was one that was realized when the dust settled, and the question of “Who get’s what?”  galloped past sadness, and loss, and took the forefront of our concern.  She had spent a lifetime working for some of the most powerful lawyers in New York.  Surely, there would be some riches to split up amongst the family, right?  Wrong.   Not a dime.  She had spent her life savings, and cashed out her life insurance policy to send us 3 brothers to one of the finest Catholic Schools in Queens.  Our Lady Queen of Martyrs.  With what was left, she sent me to Archbishop Molloy High School for 2 years.  There was simply no money to be inherited.  Imagine our amazement when we came to find out all of what she was, and what she had earned was spent ensuring that we ate meals, received education, and slept where it was warm.  Imagine our amazement to find out she wanted nothing, not even thanks, for it.  In my adult life, I have been accused of Martyrdom on more than one occasion.  I suppose it’s just me trying to follow the example of my Grandmother.  

    Many times, have I reflected upon the length of that walk on that particular night.  I try to envision every step she took, though I was not there to hear the softness of her feet as they graced the ceramic tiles underfoot.  I called it a short walk.  Really, it was not such a short walk though.  It was a long and meaningful journey  across a lush rainforest, where memories and accomplishments grew on trees, and could be plucked and savored like fruit.  Sun ripened, and full of  life sustaining, and life affirming nectar.  She was a journey-woman who took the final steps of a very long walk.


End


Jay M. Jones

    

    

Reviews

[Proletariat Uprising]

A beautiful tale dealing with death. Made me cry, and made me think about what it would be like to know when I'm going to die. Brilliant. R.I.P Grandma.