Pearls 24 comments

By Kelly Foster

Editor’s note: Today we welcome a new member of the “Good Letters” blogging team, Kelly Foster. See the Contributors page for her bio.

Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from my father that I’ve been dreading. My grandmother, his mother, had suffered a heart attack sometime on Tuesday and had been rushed to the hospital. She had been stabilized, but they had discovered that she was now in congestive heart failure. They had drained the excess fluid off her heart, and for the present, she was resting comfortably.

My grandfather died eleven years ago of congestive heart failure. Every few months, we would all rush to the hospital because they told us he was dying, only to watch him rally and improve. For three years, my family paced the torturous borderlands between here and the hereafter beside him. At the time, I hoped that some foreknowledge of his impending death would lessen the blow, but as far as I can tell, it did not.

I know it will be the same with my grandmother, even if she lives another twenty years (and she well might—she’s pretty fierce).

Before she married, my grandmother’s name was Pearl Grace Kelly. Some people call her Pearl. Some people call her Grace. Some people call her Pearl Grace. My grandfather called her “P.G.” She was raised on a farm in Raleigh, Mississippi. She climbed trees in summer dresses, made chewing gum out of tree bark and blackberries, attended church services where her father, Alonzo Augustus Kelly, a Methodist circuit-riding minister, would preach. When we were young, my brother Colin loved to hear her tell the story of how she’d once waited over four hours standing in the rafters of the barn so she could pee on her brother Mims as revenge for something he had done to her.

All her long life, she’s been outdoors. Even as a mother of six children and a full-time nurse, she maintained an extensive garden in the couple acres behind her enormous backyard. My father said she would return home from work in the afternoons, make supper, and then head out to the garden for several hours until it grew too dark to see. When she retired, she spent most of her day in the garden. She’d emerge at twilight, her auburn hair disarrayed, her perpetually sunburned face gleaming with sweat. Until very recently, I’ve never seen my grandmother’s fingers when they weren’t crowned by a half-moon of soot-brown loam.

In my most vivid early memory, I am seated next to her on the white swing in her backyard. She has draped her sturdy, already arthritic hand across my small shoulders. She swings us vigorously back and forth, no gentle lulling motion.

Kelly Gray, she tells me, you don’t need to be afraid of those bees, honey. If you just sit real still, they won’t bother you. Kelly Gray, look at those trees. Look how tall they are. Look how green. Maybe if we swing real hard we can fly all the way up past the tops of those trees.

I think it was because of her that I’ve developed a preoccupation with the rich symbolism of Pearl, of pearls. So two months ago, I purchased an anthology of Syriac Christian mysticism from Warren Farha of Eighth Day Books called The Wisdom of the Pearlers. The Pearlers were desert fathers who spent their lives contemplating the Pearl of Great Price. “The Song of the Pearl” originated with the apostle Thomas in India and tells of a prince who must go on a journey—lost, alone, and beset with foes—to redeem a valuable pearl. When he is tempted most to despair, he contemplates this pearl, and his “free-born nature assert[s] itself.” It is contemplation of this pearl that enables him to remember who he is and where he comes from so he can return there again, having claimed it.

Lost as I’ve often been, and mournful lonely, I contemplate my grandmother’s hand on my shoulder in that verdant memory. I contemplate those trees. Somehow my own fierce and free-born nature, a gift from her, asserts itself again.

I know that sooner than I would like she will move irreparably beyond me above those trees, past that green, and into the gloaming.

Until then, I will wait with her. After that, I will wait for her, until it grows too dark in the garden for my eyes to see.