Just the House Settlin'

When I was a little girl I always asked my Grandpa to tell us scary stories after dinner. He would agree, often against my grandmother’s better judgment, and actually scare the crap out of his grandchildren. I loved it. He was a good storyteller.

But when the sun went down and it was time for bed, I would begin to regret those scary stories just a little bit (of course never enough to admit)...but every creak and squeak and shadow along the long, L-shaped hallway to my bedroom became sure signs of danger.

I remember one night running back down that hallway, practically falling down the stairs, to find my grandparents and warn them about the monstrous noises. A bit to my dismay, they weren’t concerned in the least, and Grandpa said, “oh, sugar, it’s just the house settlin’.”

I had no idea what that meant, but Grandpa had built quite a few houses in his day, so surely he knew what he was talking about. I repeated that to myself rather a lot—“just the house settling”—not understanding completely, but believing it meant we were safe.

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I have been anticipating this for months—or at least trying to. So that I wouldn’t be surprised by the feeling of the rug being tugged out from under us, the feeling of our foundation crumbling under our wobbly legs. But it seems that no amount of anticipation really prepares a family to lose a pillar like a good grandparent.  Losing someone you love is disorienting, always.

It’s strange learning to live in a world without someone who has always been there—someone who helped build the world you’ve known, and who gave you the world you have. The loss of parents and grandparents seems especially this way; though you faintly assume there will come a day when you outlive them, you’ve never really been able to imagine that sort of life.

But there is no need for imagination anymore. Here we are. And though our legs may feel a little wobbly, our voices a little shaky, and our hearts a little dim, when I look around at our family, I have to believe that our foundation is firm as ever, because we were built by saints like Elzie and Ruthanne Wymer.

When I visited my grandpa a few weeks ago, I thanked him for the firm foundation he laid for our family. He looked at me and said, “We are strong, and now it’s your turn.” He gave us everything he could before he left, and it seems to be everything we needed. He built us a shelter among each other when he raised up our family.  

I hope as we carry on and learn to live in our worlds without a grandpa, father, friend, or whoever he was to us, that we find ourselves in nonlinear moments of time when our worlds still have Elzie Wymer in them. I hope we see him in the homes and churches and buildings he built, but especially in the family he built, which extends in many ways beyond blood. So many of us bear the imprint of his love, the fruit of his prayers, and the gift of his life. Grandpa spent his life giving us the tools we need to build others up, to lay firm foundations for those around us and after us, just like he did.

On that same day, as we exchanged goodbyes and I-love-yous, he said that sometimes we can be happy even when it hurts. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do trust my Grandpa who has known a lot of happiness, and certainly a lot of hurt. So even though I don’t understand completely, I just keep repeating his words to myself rather a lot. And I trust that maybe these moments of grief are just the house settlin’.