A pearl necklace and the tomorrows

A Pearl Necklace and the Tomorrows…..

Written by Amy Millar

On the eve of my cousins wedding, I am busily packing things for our family to make the journey out to Lancaster to honor her and her groom and gather as a family. The final item I will pack is my most precious belonging in the entire world.  Anyone who knows me knows I have had life experiences that have taught me to value resilience, love, honor, family and time spent with loved ones over worldly possessions.  But there is one possession that simply breaks the rules of my mantra; I am a rule breaker by nature so it’s only fitting I break my own rule. The origin of that item is more valuable than I can put into words. It is special, plain and simple but brilliant.  It is my pearl necklace.  It is my legacy from my grandmother. And so it is only fitting that something so special be a part of tomorrow’s festivities as we celebrate Kris and Tyler and their union as a family.

Weddings are special too… a time to honor love, hope and God, while the whole family is gathered in one place. They only happen every so often in a family - and it will be so great to be with everyone tomorrow - but there will be one person not there with us. There will be an empty seat next to my grandfather, a quiet, empty place that we will each take time to honor in our own way tomorrow.

We will be missing our matriarch (although if she still were able to speak she would say oh hush that’s not me). While we will all make the journey to Lancaster, she will be alone in her nursing home far away from all of us as we celebrate these two lives joining as one tomorrow.  And I know in my heart that while it saddens us all, if there was a way for her to be there and be present, our family would have moved mountains to make that happen, but the truth is in her state and condition it would be selfish: an act driven just for us, not for her. To transport her all that way, to be surround by the strangers we have now become to her because of Alzheimer’s, would be cruel and demeaning and probably leave her feeling more lost and afraid. And the Nana we knew and loved would never want all that fussing over her on such a special day.  She no longer is who she was. She wouldn’t want to burden anyone just to have her body there. Her spirit will be there regardless and we have to take comfort in that. That amazing woman will not be with us tomorrow but we will honor her in many ways as we reflect on the woman that brought a 10 lb baby home from the hospital on a 10 oz bottle who slept for 10 hours (a story we all know well from the early days of her battle with Alzheimer’s as it was a loop we would get so annoyed at… yet today I think we all would pay a million dollars to hear her tell it just one more time), who raised 5 kids, who loved and adored all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who had a heart for those who did life differently and honored them by being a pioneer for special education which now, as a mom myself raising kids who do life differently, she will never know the impact she made in me to love them beyond their struggles and disabilities and to fight for them, especially for their education. She was a pillar of her church, community and our family; brilliant, caring, and loving; her skin always ever-so-soft, her voice raised only to call for my grandfather: Bob…. BOB! She is the one who gave my cousins Kris, Beth and me our most prized possessions, our pearl necklaces.

She gave us a gift unmatched by any other gift.  And it wasn’t given to us as a whole necklace; she gave each of us, her granddaughters, a pearl at a time. A lesson taught in patience and appreciation given out of love to each of us.  When I was young I didn’t always understand this gift, I often was disappointed on Christmas and my birthday when I would receive another one of those tiny navy blue boxes with gold script writing holding a neatly and gently wrapped pearl inside. A half hearted thank you would forcibly come out of my mouth as my mother would give me that look that moms give to a child, who has opened a gift that they didn't seem thrilled about, that says you better say thank you right NOW and I mean now and look like you mean it! In time, I realized how precious this gift was and my spirit was blessed with each new box. These simple pearls were brilliant and precious.   Each pearl given represented an event and a moment in my life that we shared together.  My birth, each birthday, all the firsts, when I accepted Christ as my savior, when I was baptized, when we shared holidays together, some just because I was her granddaughter and she wanted to represent those moments shared with me in a way that at the time I didn’t always appreciate, I had to grow to understand its significance, its power, the continual gift it would become to me for the rest of my life. As my life grew and our journey as grandmother and granddaughter changed and was shaped together, so was a necklace strung from all those loose pearls. Along the way I had a strand necklace that was not quite finished. She would always say the empty spaces on the strands of the necklace were for all the tomorrows ahead, the tomorrows that would fill my life.  She did this for all three of us and they each represented three very different young women who are simple and extraordinary in their own way and were so precious to our Nana who strung us together as a family by her incredible love.

For my necklace, the final pearls were strung in honor of my marriage to my husband 11 years ago. She didn’t know when she had carefully selected those first few pearls what would become of them and the girls they represented.  I know now that she sacrificed for those pearls; she saved and fought for those pearls; she believed they mattered the way she fought for and believed in us and showed us every day that we mattered. She could have chosen to give each of us a completed necklace, it would still have been special to us but the careful, purposeful way she gave this gift was more symbolic than I can express and more powerful than anyone will ever understand how each pearl came together just as our lives did because of her love, perseverance and faith. And so, on my wedding day I wore my finished pearl necklace for the very first time and as the doors opened I took a breath in and felt their presence resting ever so gently on my chest, the way my head used to rest on her chest as a child, as I walked towards my groom I brought my whole life to him in each of those simple, yet brilliant pearls with each simple yet brilliant moment in my life, I brought them all forward. I remember seeing her sitting next to my grandfather in the pew proudly as I walked past. Our eyes locked as we shared a moment. She smiled at me in adoration not of a necklace… but of me, of what I had become because of each of those moments it represented.   It was a moment in my life I will treasure always.

There will come a tomorrow when my daughters will one day wear my necklace and I will share with them all the significance of a simple yet brilliant pearl necklace.  There is a special bond between grandmothers and granddaughters and there will be many tomorrows I wish with all that is within me she could share with us but in my heart I know she will always be with us because of all the love she strung in us.   That brings me peace among the ever growing ache for her presence in my tomorrows.  In that peace I know that there will be a tomorrow one day that will come when I will be honored to wrap a tiny, navy blue box with gold script writing on it with a simple yet extraordinary pearl nested sweetly with all my love for the birth of my first granddaughter. In that moment I believe will be a forever pivotal space in time that my Nana will get to share in for generations to come all because she loved her simple yet extraordinary granddaughters in a simple yet extraordinary way.

And so tomorrow Kris as a beautiful new bride will wear her pearls too, and she will bring with her all of who she has become through her simple yet brilliant moments of her life to her groom Tyler. And when the doors open and she makes her way towards her groom there will be a moment when she looks over at my grandfather who will be beaming with joy and pride… there will be a space, a felt emptiness beside him. My prayer is that as she takes in that bittersweet moment and locks eyes with our proud grandfather that she feels her breath and the unfinished pearl necklace that sits ever so gently on her chest that she is reminded of how it felt to lay her head on Nana’s chest all those years ago and know that that empty space beside Papa is not empty at all... it is over flowingly filled with all of Nana’s love, joy and pride for her precious granddaughter just as it was at my wedding and just as it will be at Beth’s one day. And while for Kris, the youngest granddaughter who Nana didn’t get the chance to finish her necklace like she did for me and for Beth, hers will tell the tale that just like its unfinished strands, Kris’ story isn’t complete and neither is our Nana’s and it’s still full of tomorrows. Kris will not just bring all who she has become but she will also bring all her unfinished tomorrows to her groom.  And that is a gift in-and-of itself that I am so grateful for Kris to have because unlike Beth and me, she was robbed of knowing Nana beyond those early years the way we got to. She doesn’t remember who Nana used to be; she only knows the nana that has been taken little-by-little by a relentless disease. But yet what grace is strung in that necklace that forever will hold her tomorrow wishes from her nana who loved each of us so very much. A silver lining of both sorrow and blessing in it being unfinished with emptiness and yet full of what may come all in the same. Her necklace is waiting for all the tomorrow moments ahead of her and while Nana won’t be able to share in them physically, she will always be a part of them in spirit. Kris may choose to leave the remaining strands empty - continuing to represent those tomorrows - or she may decide to add a pearl for their first home, their first Christmas, their first child: inviting our nana into those moments through a small navy blue box with gold script writing with a carefully placed pearl inside.  But in the end no matter the number of pearls on that necklace, it will always hold Nana’s love for her, how proud of her she is, all that Kris and Nana have become and all their tomorrows.

Tomorrow I will have a special moment amongst all the joy and celebration, great food and even greater company, I am not sure when it will come and it may not be a spoken one. It may be one felt simply through the sight of a flickering candle as I touch my pearls, or the sweet aroma of the purple flowers (her favorite color), or in the simple elegance that will be all around us in a quaint quiet town that Nana always loved… but it will be one that I know Kris, Beth and I will share together in tomorrow’s tomorrow that we are blessed to have been strung together with the love, patience, and kindness of a woman who is never as far away from us than our hearts that beat below our most precious gift, our Nana’s pearl necklaces.

          

So here is to the tomorrows ahead of a bride and groom and each of us and to our sweet Nana, who strung us all together as an ever-growing simple yet extraordinary family like those precious pearls in faith, love and hope; who instilled in us to love one another, to follow Christ and to treasure today and honor what a gift a tomorrow is….