Memories of Lorely ~ November 5, 1998

David Heiller

The phone rang at 4:45 a.m. I picked it up and answered before I was really awake. If I had been awake, I would have known to be prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for the news. No one ever is.

My grandma, my mom,
my great-grandma and me.

All my sleepiness disappeared in an instant as Cindy’s voice washed over me. Her mother had died. She was gone, David, gone. I held her in my arms and she died.

We talked for a short time. I can’t remember what we said. We didn’t need to say much. We just needed to be connected, even if it was through a telephone wire.

Her brother was there. The minister was coming. They had to tell Nancy, Cindy’s sister. I told Cindy how sorry I was. That didn’t seem like the right thing to say. It didn’t seem like enough.

After I hung up the phone, I lay in the dark for a few minutes. I didn’t want to move. I knew if I moved the calm would break and the storm would hit.

And it did when I sat up and the minutes passed and the reality settled on me like the world on Atlas that my mother-in-law, Lorely Olson, had died.

Sobs wracked me. I said I was sorry to Lorely. I said it in the dark, and maybe she heard me on her upward flight.

Lorely and I didn’t agree on a lot of things. We didn’t have much in common. Little things she did would bug me. There were bigger issues that irked me even more.

She had been sick for three years, and I knew I sometimes withheld my love for her, and now the shame of that hit me good and hard.

Randy and Mom, 
she loved to laugh, and he got her going!

But sitting on the edge of the bed, I felt her forgiveness. That fit her character perfectly. She had a lot of forgiveness in her. Right then and there it gave me hope that maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could learn some lessons from her.

One came crystal clear right then and there: how much I loved my wife, and needed her.

The next 90 minutes passed more slowly than any I can recall. I didn’t want to call anyone, wake them up, inconvenience them. Why make someone else miserable?

That wouldn’t have happened, of course. In fact, just the opposite is the case.

My mother was a wonderful grandma.

But I knew I would have to tell the kids, and I dreaded it. They both get wake up calls at 6:30, and I let them sleep till then, partly because I didn’t want them to have any more minutes of sorrow than necessary, but mainly because I didn’t know how to tell them.

They loved Lorely the way only a grandma can be loved and she loved them back, big time. They gave her so much joy, from the time they were little, through walks at Banning Park, in hand-made Valentines, with Christmas grins as they opened her piles of gifts.

They knew she was dying, just like I did, and I knew their pain would be as shocking and deep as mine. Probably more.

Noah was first. I told him and he took the news the way I took the news of my sister’s death when I was his age, 15, back in 1969: calmly, quietly, head down, alone in a precise sorrow, and I thought, I’m a lot like you.

With Mollie the tears sprang out in an instant, and I knew that would happen too, because that’s who she is, and that’s a part of me too.

The important thing was that we were together. We needed that.

We ate breakfast. Mollie called Cindy and cried some more. Noah didn’t want to talk to her. Then they got on the school bus and I went to work.

I don’t know all the stages of grief. I don’t like to analyze things like that. But they are probably all layered inside of me right now, and still forming like a crust of cooling earth.

Malika and Grandma

Thankfulness to finally hold Cindy. Joy at seeing her sister and brother and his family. Gratitude for all the calls and words and hugs of support. Amazement too, at the strength these things carried.

My sorrow is changing shape. The sobs and moans are gone. So is the sharp guilt of how I let her down. Now it’s just a hollow, almost disbelieving feeling that she is really, truly gone.

I cleaned out the car on Sunday night. It was filled with boxes of treasures. Our wedding picture, with Lorely proudly smiling in the back row. She always seemed to be smiling in pictures. I never noticed that before.

A picture of Noah and Mollie hugging, back when they were little and liked each other. I loved that picture. Lorely had too.

A photo of Mollie holding a huge potato, of Noah standing in a hollow tree trunk. They had hung on Lorely’s walls for 11 years.

A picture of Mollie twirling in a white dress that Lorely had made. Pictures we had given her, that made us happy and made her happy.

I picked up candy wrappers that Lorely had left in the car. It was one of those little things about her that bugged me. Now my impatience seemed silly. I’d give her that habit, and all the others, to have her back again.

But she can’t come back, and everyone said that it’s good how it happened. Even Lorely’s doctor told Cindy that. The cancer was real bad. He didn’t think it would happen so fast. But it was the best thing possible, he said, and so did many other people.

And she died in Cindy’s arms. I can think of worse ways to go.