I've been away from the blog for a few days due to the death of my grandmother, Elsie Sandefur, on Thursday night. We had the funeral on Tuesday, and will be heading to Colorado next week for the internment in Leadville, which is where she and my grandfather spent their summers. My grandmother was a very interesting lady. Here is the talk I gave at the funeral.
At times like this, we think about what it means to live a full life; whether my grandmother got all out of life that she could, and whether each of us is taking advantage of this marvelous and temporary gift. We are each born into a world without our choosing, and must each choose how to spend it before it is gone. When it is, we ask whether a person spent it well; if she used her gifts; if she participated in the fleeting moments, great and small, that make up a life.
My grandmother spent her life well. She helped build the planes that won World War II. She made furniture, and painted, and performed in a chamber orchestra. She traveled to Peru and Argentina. Born at a time when women did not become archaeologists, Grandma not only obtained a PhD, but did so at the age of 65, after raising two sons, and she went on to found the UCLA Bone Lab. She once helped smuggle a computer across a third world border. She served a research fellowship at the Smithsonian. She once bought a potion of frog’s blood from a witch doctor in a Peruvian marketplace. Few of us can say that!
And she took great joy in the gentler pursuits: in her family, in the company of her brothers and sisters and her friends and her grandchildren. She adored and depended on my father. She delighted in the holidays, in the decorations and traditions and the giving of gifts. Sometimes we actually got physically tired from opening so many presents! Simply put, she enjoyed participating in life; she was genuinely interested in the little details of experiences, and the stories of other people’s histories.
Humans are momentary beings, and we live through our stories. We tell our lives through stories and interpret the world through stories. And when we die we are left not with things but with thoughts, not with profits but with experiences, and it is through the memories we create that each of us lives on. When we think of Grandma, all of us think of the stories: she put ketchup in her chili; she saved used Christmas wrap. She once excavated a dog that she found buried in the hill beside her Colorado house, and took the bones back to the Bone Lab. Years later, the former owners came to visit, and asked if they could see the grave of their beloved dog. Grandma took them up to the site, and stood quietly, no doubt smiling to herself, as the couple paid their respects….
I hope we will all think of our favorite stories about Elsie Sandefur. And if there is a lesson to be drawn from her life, it is to invest ourselves in the life all around us. For there is nothing more to our existence, and nothing less. The great poet E.E. Cummings once wrote,
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
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