This Side of Heaven

Growing up in her Pittsburgh neighborhood, she attended Catholic grade school and enjoyed the love of a large family. She married later in life and moved with her new husband to Florida, so very far away from everything she held dear. She and her husband owned a small grocery and in a few short years, she had a daughter... the apple of her eye.

In time, she grew weary of her husband's drinking, of his womanizing, and ultimately of his physical expressions of anger. She knew she had to get away and build a new life for her daughter and herself.

She was ashamed to tell her family of the true circumstances regarding her marriage. They'd warned her he drank too much, but she had been stubborn and in love. And she certainly didn't want to tell her Catholic family that she needed a divorce. It was 1950, and women just didn't leave their husbands and strike out on their own.

But she was going to ... so she secretly saved up money, then packed up clothes for herself and her daughter into two suitcases. She boarded a train in Florida and traveled to Norfolk, VA. Besides the clothes on their back and in their suitcases, they had no other belongings. She knew no one in Norfolk. But she was determined to make a life for her daughter that was safer and peaceful.

She took a civil service job at the Navy Base and eventually bought a little house in a peaceful neighborhood. She watched her daughter grow, finish school, get married, and start her own family nearby.

She was an incredible woman who smoked more cigarettes that some would think humanly possible. She always had a cup of tea steaming on the table. When family would travel in from Pittsburgh there would be big dinners and a house full of laughter. She grew pretty flowers in her back yard and spoiled her grandchildren. She was independent and smart and never slowed down till a stroke took her from this earth, on October 4, 1984 just 2 days before her birthday... our birthday.

I always loved the idea of having the same birthday as my Grandmother. We would have two cakes, and she always had so many more candles on her cake than I did! It was just one of the many things that bonded the two of us together.

It's been 28 years since she left this Earth, but her spirit lives on! Whenever I begin to question how I will manage this raising of two children, so far from my family (but where I was led), I think of her. I know if she can do it, so can I, in God's grace. I can't wait to sit down and have a cup of tea with her when I get to the other side. 




(I originally wrote this in 2008, and it's been languishing in an archive of notes... today seemed a good day to pull it out again).