Saturday, March 7, 2009

The Answer to "Who Am I?" #2

She was my maternal grandmother, Dorthy (without the traditional second "o"), a woman who rests across the gravel road from James Dean, Hollywood’s rebel poster boy, in Fairmount, Indiana. I had visited her grave a few times when I was younger, but something riveted me in 1995 as I stood beside my mother, who had lost this woman when she was only four years old. No ghosts floated overhead, no voices carried on the February wind.

What I did see was myself. The woman buried here was part of me, filtered through my mother. This woman was gone, yet she wasn’t. I stood as a reminder of her legacy.

Born at that moment was a lengthy list of internal questions: What was she like? Did she have a sense of humor? Was she brave? Did she speak her mind? Was she creative? Did she sing? What was her voice like?

My mother did not have those answers. All she had of her mother was a brown fabric purse with wood clasps and the sparse contents. All that remained was a handful of photos, half of them posed snapshots and the other half of the final images of the woman in her casket, surrounded by a flood of flowers, a natural outpouring for a mother of two who died far too young at age 27.

Hoping I was not bordering on morbid fascination, I studied the photographs of my grandmother, both living and dead. The wedding ring and watch she still wears.

I focused on the small smile and the eyes emerging from the black and white images of her standing alone. Then I would close my eyes and try to imagine the color of hers, try to bring her into a three-dimensional world as if I were creating an old home movie.

I read her obituary countless times, its succinct summary of a lifetime in six inches. But it did not tell the whole story. My reporter background told me there had to be more.

I talked to my grandmother’s surviving siblings at a family reunion that summer, a meeting that stirred sweet and sad memories of a woman frozen in time …

More tomorrow …

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