When Someone is in Your Heart

Four generations at my Baptism
Grandma K, Kim, Karina, Grandma Joyce
1991, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church

Something is terribly wrong. You hear your mom crying on the phone in the study. Your dad is in there as well, but neither you nor your brother and sister can make out through the closed glass door whether he is crying as well. You start to feel sick. Someone has died.

These aren’t the kind of tears your mom sheds sometimes when saying goodbye to relatives at the airport. You’re brought back to a late night years ago just before the flight back to Phoenix. As you all had waved to your grandparents before disappearing through the security checkpoint, Mom had begun to cry. She made no sound as they rolled down her cheeks; she simply picked up her purse where the x-ray had spit it back out. It had felt like a beautiful scene in a movie: the loving goodbye, marked by a daughter’s tears who would wait another six months before seeing her parents again. You remember how you saw her tears return upon takeoff in the dark cabin. While she stared out over snow-covered Minneapolis, you started to silently cry, too.

But these weren’t those kinds of tears. It wasn’t a moving scene in that sense. In fact, your mom looked like a mess. Someone has died; you know it. You didn’t think it could happen again so soon. Grandpa Murl, your dad’s dad, had just passed away the year before. How could you bear losing someone else?

You sit on the leather couch, tense, and wait for the news. Your parents have finally left the study and gather you and your siblings in the living room. You look at your dad. He might have cried, but you’re not sure. Either way, he’s able to keep himself composed while it takes your mom a while to speak through her tears.

“Grandma K passed away.”

The sickening feeling in your stomach gets worse. You were right. You didn’t want to be, but you were. You’ve just lost someone else in your family and you’re halfway across the country from her. Your cheeks flush, your neck and chest burn, and you’re sure your ears are the same flushed shade of red. You were too busy with your racing thoughts to notice the tears running down your cheeks until you feel their coolness down your neck.

Your sister is sitting next to you. She’s already mildly sobbing. On the other side of her, your little brother is also crying. It seems so much worse to watch them cry as they try to wipe away their tears with their glasses on. After what seems like forever, everyone reaches a melancholic level of calm. Your parents return to the study to start booking a flight back to Minnesota for the funeral.

You withdraw to the sanctuary of your room and close the door, shutting out the rest of your grieving family. After you splash cool water on your face, neck, and ears, you grab a wad of Kleenexes from the box above the toilet. Then you slide the door closed to the bathroom you share with your sister, cutting her off as well. You don’t mean to be rude, but you’re already emotionally exhausted. Seeing others grieve only deepens your own and you can’t bear it. You’d rather be alone in your room.

The funeral date is set. Your flight is scheduled. Before you begin to pack, you reluctantly unpack your duffel bag that was all ready for your trip to San Luis Obispo, California. You and two of your best friends were going to celebrate your summer birthdays over the weekend. While there’s no question that you want to be there for your grandma, you’re so disappointed over the trip and how unfair life can be, that you start to cry all over again. You pick up your phone to let your friends know. It’s times like these when you thank God for texting, because you’d never be able to get through a phone call right now.

Even while on the usual drive into town, everything feels surreal. It’s like a bad dream you still haven’t woken up from. You can’t decide if it’s better that you know what will happen at the funeral. The service, the wake, the tears, and the endless sympathetic looks from everyone in town who knows your family, which is everyone. Back in the car, your chest starts to constrict as you hold back the tears that are threatening to fall. Not here, not now. You haven’t even seen any of your extended family, let alone arrived within the town limits.

Grandma K’s funeral isn’t held at St. Paul’s. At first you find that off-putting. Does an unfamiliar funeral home help alleviate the grief? Your family doesn’t enter the church through its nostalgic scented coatroom to the sound of the church bells. Instead you walk up a few steps into a house you’ve never seen in your life. But as you walk around, led by the kind staff, you wonder how a funeral home could feel so instantly cozy and warm. Though it is used for a much different purpose now, the house retains its original plan. The service and wake are held in a large room to the left, perhaps once a large formal living room. Back out and down the wallpapered hallway is the kitchen where refreshments and food await. People quietly chat and reminisce in yet another room off the hallway. Later in the afternoon, when you almost forgot where you were, you take a moment to silently approve the house’s success in feeling almost like your family’s home.

For you, the worst part of the day is when you go up to the casket to pay your respects. Seeing Grandma K in the casket will make everything finally feel real. As you wait behind your parents in line, you become anxious. You’re scared the mortician couldn’t capture Grandma K’s spunk in her still frame; you want to keep that last memory of her lively. As you finally step up to the casket and peer over the side, you begin to silently cry. Part of you wishes Grandma K would turn the corner and wobble in through the crowd, leaving you and the rest of the mourners staring at an uncanny wax figurine. But she is lovely lying there as though she was sleeping. Her white blond curls look like she just stepped out of her beauty parlor. A smile escapes as you think she’ll no longer need that plastic kerchief to protect them from the rain.

The next few days after the funeral aren’t so bad, though a melancholic haze seems to surround your family. When you laugh with your cousins, you all pause awkwardly because it doesn’t feel right to be having fun. Your family is constantly gathered together. Sometimes tears well up in someone’s eyes but they’re overcome through sharing stories about Grandma K over hearty dishes and desserts. No sooner than the table prayer ends, three adults simultaneously announce Grandma K’s version of “Bon Appetit”: “Dig in!” Later, someone drops a utensil and immediately others shout, “Company is coming!” just as she always did. Though Grandma K isn’t physically present, her words echo throughout your gatherings, bringing both tears and deep laughter.

Family Resemblance

Left: My uncle and mother. Right: Me in the same dress my mother is wearing on the left.

A shy little girl walks out of the church service. She follows closely behind her parents as they make their way down the church steps, weaving through the crowd. It seems like they stop to talk to every member of the congregation. The little girl doesn’t talk to anyone. Her cousins have gone somewhere else. All the adults talk and laugh. Finally, someone notices the girl standing partially behind her Dad. Her blonde bob complete with thick bangs framing her oval face elicits memories of her mother as a child. Sometimes it is an elderly woman who exclaims with a smile,“Oh my goodness, well you must be little Kim Burandt!” Other times, the little girl hears “I sure know who you belong to. You look just like your mother.” from someone who is probably one of her parents’ friends. She doesn’t reply, only shyly smiling from her partial hiding place. The little girl doesn’t remember any of these people but they all seem to know who she is.

Elementary school portraits. Left: my mother. Right: me. 

By now, years later, it is a running joke that everyone in church will tell the girl she looks like her mother. In fact, if the comment is actually directed at her, there is usually the follow-up comment: “I’m sure you get that all the time.” She does. A few years earlier she might have thought it was annoying. But now, it’s such a familiar occurrence that she keeps a count of how many times she receives the comment—variations on wording don’t matter. When her grandparents reintroduce their grandkids visiting from Arizona, there’s usually a “Little Kim” somewhere in the response. Her cousin shares a knowing smile and a giggle with her every time they hear it.

My mother and I in 2012.

Her family has been returning to this scene for over 15 years now. Everyone is older and fashion has evolved; yet nothing about this scene has really changed. The church congregation crowds the upper and lower lobby as they merrily converse and avoid stepping back out into the snow. Cousins watch over their own kids while the now great-grandparents catch up with neighbors. Her Dad is joking with a former teacher. Her Mom is laughing with a friend, the guy who played the Mayor and her husband in The Music Man, remember him? One of her parents’ friends remarks to another man, “That must be Kim’s oldest. She looks just like her.” It marks the third tally of the night. This year, she only overhears the comments, sometimes from several conversations away.  Three is the 2013 grand total.

When she shares the results, her grandparents, parents, and siblings laugh. Then they realize how small the number is. “You look like your mother” had always been a marker of her growth and connection to her mom as well as a deeper connection to the small town, even though she has never lived there. Now she has seen the phrase in a new light: it also signifies the relationship between her family and the actual people in the town. The people they know have influenced the tally each year. People have moved away, skipped an annual visit, passed away, or simply have not risked the icy roads this Christmas. “You look like your mother” honors a kind of family legacy, which links the familial resemblance with the past and a tight-knit community.