2 - Jesus Wept

[thisnewday]

More than fifty years afterward, I still feel that I've never properly grieved the loss of my grandmother. She was the one that my mother and I had lived with, in the town of Wesleyville, Pennsylvania, while my father was away during the war.

I'd held a special place in her heart, according to my father who spoke with me about it on the afternoon she died. And I remember how, in the days that followed, as relatives gathered and plans were made and services held, I sat in silence, away from the others, on the front porch of the house at Fremont Street and Station Road.

I remember also that my great aunt, my grandmother's sister, came out on the porch and said to me, with worry on her face and in her voice, "Do you know what the shortest verse in the Bible is?"

I didn't, and so she said, "Jesus wept."

I'm pretty sure that, in the days before her funeral, I cried. And know that  in my dreams I've sometimes grieved. Even so, it's never seemed enough. Maybe it simply never is, in the face of incomprehensible loss...

LPK

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11.15.2013 (b)