VERA'S ANGEL
“…as a fragment of her life and faith, he is of value to me.”
Born in 1919 to an unstable mother who was in and out of institutions, my grandmother Vera was sent at the age of 6 to live with a childless aunt and uncle while her siblings were shuffled in and out of foster homes. Auntie, as Vera called her, made a strict but cherished surrogate mother. She’d often tell her, “You’ll always be my little girl.” Sixty years later Vera would say the same to me.
Vera was full of stories. She told me how, when she was 15, a pharmacist offhandedly let it slip that her aunt had cancer. How, after Auntie died, she dropped out of high school to work as a secretary at a law firm, and turned down marriage proposals from both young partners to marry a man twice her age. She talked rarely about the lonely years that followed, how she longed to travel, to go out dancing, but my grandfather wanted dinner on the table at the same time every night. Instead she told me many times how, the first time he saw her, he said to himself, “That’s the girl for me.”
Late in life refrains like these became like mantras for her, words that reminded her she had been cared for. Yet one of her favorite stories was remarkable in part because it involved no words at all. During the darkest hours of Auntie’s illness, Vera had sat at the kitchen table, hopeless, fearful and alone. Suddenly the room flooded with light, and two blinding figures materialized. Angels, she believed. Though they didn’t speak, she felt the essence of their message. When they disappeared she was left awash in peace and comfort.
Her faith and her stories kept her company after she was widowed in 1985. I recall her puttering around, chit-chatting to God and sometimes the cat. Raised as I was by a Jewish mother and atheist dad, I didn’t always know what to do with Vera’s religiosity. Yet as I grew into adulthood and she approached death, I was grateful for her direct line to God.
Visiting her at the nursing home, I recognized her smile and eyes, which looked so deeply into mine, but I could not follow her words.
I forgot, she’d say.
That’s all right, I’d reassure her.
She persisted: If God can forgive me, why can’t everyone?
I’d hold her hand. Forgive you for what, Grandmom?
Laughing bitterly she’d say, God has an awful sense of humor! Moments later: Nobody told me.
Told you what? I asked.
Despairingly she fretted: I forgot. You tell them. Tell them I forgot.
I promised her I’d tell them, though whom or what, I didn’t know. What I meant was I’d remember her. What I meant was she was loved.
I have no idea if this stained-glass angel was of any value to Vera. She might have won him at Bingo for all I know. But as a fragment of her life and faith he is of value to me. He hangs in the window of my writing room. Research indicates he might be Sandalphon, angel of music, who takes the prayers of the just-dead and weaves them into flower garlands for God. I think she’d be amused that, for all my pained deliberation over sentences, the guardian I inherited from her is one who makes mute beauty of our most urgent utterances. He reminds me of her. He reminds me that, in the end, the end is beyond words.
