song for sarah nan

she was my great-grandmother's last child, and the only one of those eight children to have been born in a hospital. she died yesterday. her name was sarah nan, but when i was little, i thought it was "sarah and anne". of course, i misheard a lot of things when i was little, and was usually too shy to ask for clarification, so i didn't realize her middle name was actually "nan" until i was in my late teens, and looking through photos. i ran across one with "nan" writeen across the back, but it looked just like aunt sarah. i was so confused that i took the photo to my grandmother, who said it was, in fact, aunt sarah, but they'd just written "nan" on the back, since it was her middle name. suddenly, "sarah and anne" made a lot more sense to me. crazy, right?

i wasn't particularly close to my great-aunt sarah, but not especially distant, either. she was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, an aunt, a daughter, and a friend. she saw elvis presley and jerry lee lewis in a louisiana hayride show at cherry springs dance hall, one night. when she was a teenager, she would ride my uncle's horse, old girl, between the house and the garage at breakneck speeds that apparently would scare the pants off my great-grandmother. by the time i knew her, my aunt sarah was much tamer. in fact, when i first heard that story, about five years ago, i remember looking at my aunt sue (her older sister), and saying "aunt sarah?? sarah sessom did that?" aunt sue got a kick of how suprised i was. time tamed sarah nan in several ways, and none of them were particularly kind, i don't think.

she married the boy that took her to see elvis and jerry lee. and he died in a car wreck not too long after that. she almost died in the same wreck. they didn't have any children. some years later, she married my uncle clayton, who was from a little town, too. they lived in texarkana for all of my life, and raised two girls. we saw them a couple of times a year, mostly at holidays. aunt sarah's birthday was july 4th, and that was one of the holidays we'd usually see them.

when i look at her through my child's eyes, i remember her laughing, or telling stories. i remember that she always had the most fantastically puffy hair. i didn't realize until i was much older that the puffy hair served to cover up scars from the carwreck. i remember the way her eyes would twinkle when she would tease, or tell a joke that was a little bit naughty. i remember the way she would make smoking a cigarette look like the most glamourous and fun thing you could ever do. i remember her hands, and the way that she favored the small, slim watches that my grandmother wore, too. she looked so much like my great-grandmother the last time i saw her. i can't remember a single conversation that we ever had just between the two of us, and i can't tell you what i thought we would have talked about, ever. but she was part of the fabric of my family, and her face is indeliblely marked on the history of who we all are, together.

when i look at sarah through my adult eyes, i see so many things that i wish could have been different for her, for all of us, really. but none of that matters, now. because yesterday, everything became different. sarah now knows as she is fully known, and the fears and percieved failures, the pain and the unanswerable questions were all lifted in a moment of grace that for her, will stretch out into eternity. and one day, we will all be together again, perfected and known and whole in houses made just for us by God and Jesus. that's amazing to me, and such a comfort to know. God bless Sarah Nan. God bless us all.

mil besos,
rmg