A sad return…

by Jonathan Lowery • July 25th, 2008

Several weeks have passed by in a blur now. I started working at the PUSH summer training session in early July and have been moving at 90-to-nothing since.

The last few weeks have been a lot of fun and a major learning experience for me. Spending the year training with PUSH has lent a whole new dimension to the training. There’s also the part where I’m a staff member now, not a student. I got to teach a couple classes and spent some time reconnecting with the teacher side of myself outside of the studio.

Life, however, was not without balance. On Friday, July 18th my mother called me around 8:45 am to tell me that my grandmother, Leona Lowery had quietly passed away earlier that morning. So, for the past week I have been under an extra load of emotional stress on top of the normal intense training schedule.

Wednesday, I traveled back to Mississippi to attend the services for my grandmother. The burial service was on Thursday and today (Friday) I am sitting in the Jackson airport getting ready to fly back to Rochester. I wish I could have stayed longer, but the balancing act work and necessity are always performing draws me up north again.

So, I got to see my family and was able to finally let my grandmother go. She had been struggling with dementia and other health issues for years and had been spiraling down from assisted living to nursing homes for about two years. Always an independent woman, she remained just lucid enough to realize her situation but could do nothing to fix it, although she tried mightily.

My dad’s parents were the only grandparents I ever knew. My grandfather died in 1994 when I was 10, but I adopted his love of the stage and performing. It was my grandfather who took me to my first ‘theater’ - the circus - which probably explains my current profession more thoroughly than anything else.

My grandmother lived a life of service. She altered her career path when she met my grandfather so she could follow him across the country as he worked. She earned degrees back in the 1930’s and 40’s that would probably equal a doctorate in education today and dedicated the rest of her life to her family and students.

As her oldest grandchild, I ended up having long conversations with her about education and life, learning far too much about my dad’s life in the process. My interests as I grew up began to both merge and simultaneously diverge from her own. I was interested in ministry and in the state of the world, but I took a more expressive than practical path towards those interests. But even though she didn’t always understand what I was doing, she supported me through it. I have my grandparents, and my grandmother specifically, to thank for putting me through college debt-free and allowing me to pursue my career as it now exists.

I could wax more eloquent, but time restrains me. My flight is boarding momentarily and I will soon dive back into my daily routines and familiar faces. I feel like that’s the way my grandmother lived, though. She was the one just behind, who would do anything she could to help but wouldn’t step into the limelight to do it. I feel a strange emptiness without her now, but I have to push on with life. To do any less would dishonor her work in me.

So I had a sadly unexpected return home, but I’m glad her suffering is over. And I remember that the important thing should be that I knew her at all. Having known my grandmother was a blessing that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

The boarding call is nigh. I hope my grandmother’s recent flight was just as pleasant.