The directness of this statement should have shocked me. It didn't. In fact, I could have sworn I'd heard Grandma Heersink's thick Dutch accent a few minutes earlier, as the preacher droned on. Just as he started repeating a verse for the fifth time, I'm positive I heard: "Youst cut the crap!"
The eulogists got that right: Hendrika Heersink spoke her mind, whatever was on it. Before our marriage, Grandma Heersink took her granddaughter aside and asked her if she had "tried [me] out". I was flabbergasted at the time; eleven years later I'm only surprised she didn't blurt that question out in my presence.
The people who unfailingly speak their minds can be divided into those who love to hear themselves talk and those who are worth listening to. Grandma Heersink was worth listening to. A child of the Depression, she had seen hardship up close and personal: like many of her generation, she was loath to waste anything if it could be restored and put to use. She was relentlessly practical, but harboured a deep and abiding sentiment if the topic turned to children, birds, or (most especially) her husband John.
John Heersink died four and a half years ago. When he did, it was widely speculated Henny would follow him within months, if not weeks. There was nothing morbid in this speculation: rather, it was a testament to the strength of the love that had sustained their marriage for sixty years. Indeed, Grandma Heersink's health began a slow and inexorable decline the day her husband passed away. Yet she soldiered on, exhibiting a strength that, along with her outspokenness, has echoed down the generations: every woman in that family is a tower of strength.
It takes strength to emigrate from Holland to Canada, as Henny did in 1958 with six young children in tow and not knowing a word of English.It takes strength to babysit toddlers into your eighties--moving, when you have to, just as fast as they do. It takes a great deal of strength at that age to live fully independently.
Grandma Heersink made Eva's wedding dress (and several others over the years). She made a cheesecake the chief ingredient of which had to be some species of magic. She would scavenge old furniture and restore it to better than new, then give it to her friends and family. What I mean to say is that Grandma Heersink lived life to the full and set a shining example to everyone she met. Even in her death, she brought people together who had been drifting apart.
Her funeral was, alas, a disappointment. It was explicitly, at times painfully Christian, which would have been fine if Henny herself was. After the service, I asked my mother-in-law if her mother had been at all religious...eliciting at least three snorts from people around us. Again I flashed back on the strident voice I'd heard midway through: "Youst cut the crap!" It's that voice I will remember. That voice that--and you can laugh if you want to--reinforces my already held belief that there is, in fact, something beyond. Now that Grandma's there, I can picture her, finally in the company of her beloved husband. Tomorrow they'll have God over for the ever-traditional Sunday supper of soup and sandwiches, and let me tell you this: God better watch what He says.
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