Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the continuity of life. The vastness of spirit that flows throughout time, that came before us and will continue beyond our presence here on earth. It is humbling and comforting all at once. The year I graduated from high school, I searched through my record albums for a quote to put beneath my senior yearbook picture. I guess you can figure out how long ago that must have been, at minimum, since I was still spinning vinyl for tunes. Oh, all right, since you don’t have your calculator, it was in 1980, OK? Anyway, I chose a line from “Within You Without You” by George Harrison from the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album. The Beatles were long gone by then, but timeless as ever. I didn’t actually care for the song much, but I liked the line “And to see you’re really only very small, and life flows on within you and without you.”
I still like that line, but especially the second half. I think of what our life may have been before this earth, if our soul existed with God first, about our life in this body, and about what it may be after. I think of life in all its forms all over the earth, and of how we are a small part of that beating force. And I think of my family members, some of whom have passed, of my children who were just a vague dream barely 10 years ago, and of their children who have yet to come.
There are other quotes I can recall from different times in my life that bring me back to the same themes, the endless flow of life, and love, although they were given breath by those dear to me, not by famous musicians with funny haircuts. When I must have been in my early teens, I remember my grandmother saying absently to my mother, as she watched me at some task, “Nana [my great grandmother] said you love your grandchildren just like your own, and it’s true.” I didn’t have any children of my own yet, of course, and I heard this with the ears of a child, but I knew it meant something special. Now that I do have children, I can appreciate the enormity of what she was saying. I can envision her heart expanding to include me and my sister in the special circle of love that only a mother can conceive.
Many years later, I had my first child, Julia. What a beautiful baby! Oh, I know, every mother says that, and every mother means it. And my mother, who has always adored babies, was completely enraptured by her. In fact one of the clearest memories I have from Julia’s birth is the pure joy in my mother’s smile as she watched. The only other time I saw her smile quite like that was the day I was married. I have only one sibling, and I remember when I was small my mother wanted another baby desperately, although I didn’t really understand why you just couldn’t have one if you wanted one! One day when Julia was only a few weeks old, my mother and I were going somewhere together with the baby. I drove and my mother rode in back next to Julia. My mom muttered something, but I didn’t quite hear. “What?” I asked, watching her in the rearview mirror. Without looking up from the baby, she continued her own little conversation.
“I was just thinking, this is the best time in Grandma’s life. You are that baby I wanted all those years ago. I didn’t know then that God would give you to me as a grandchild.”
I’ll never forget those words.
Still more years later, my Gammy grew old and weak. She suffered from dementia, remembering things from decades ago but not that her husband had passed, or if she had eaten breakfast. She lived with my mother after my grandfather passed away, until her body grew so feeble that she needed constant medical attention. Reluctantly my mother had her transferred from the hospital to a convalescent home, but Mom went to see her for hours every single day. I had two children by that time, and later a third. I tried to go at least once a week, at lunch time when my mother was there, and to bring my little ones with me to make Gammy smile, although I am ashamed to say I didn’t always make it. One day Gammy looked at my pretty daughter and said to my mother , “Diane, what happened to my little girl?” She looked worried and perplexed. Where was her own pretty little girl with big brown eyes?
“Well, Mother, I’m your little girl, remember? I’m all grown up now, and I have grandchildren. These are your great grandchildren.”
“Oh,” Gammy said, and nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. Her first child, a pretty little girl, just like mine, burned forever into her memory too deeply for dementia to touch. Her love for her little girl was the same as it had been 65 years earlier, the same as it would be in 65 more years.
In my children’s faces I see God, and I wonder how anyone who has ever loved a child could possibly doubt that there is indeed a God, that there is indeed an ongoing life that flows from one of us to another, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, forever. I remember the things I have heard that I keep in my heart, and I know that at least once, George Harrison was right. Life flows on, within us and without us.