not exactly a eulogy

for my grandmother, Rita Higgins, who died on Thursday, March 20. It was the first day of spring, which is appropriate, since she loved to garden. Also appropriate, given that she was a "good little Catholic girl", she managed not to die on the Holy Weekend, which is not a football weekend in the Catholic Church, go figure. You can see already what I mean about this not being a eulogy. If it were, I'd have said what everyone was saying about Grandma at the funeral, that she was such a lady. No, it was the Catholic thing, I'm sure of it.

Not that being a "good little Catholic girl" is inherently a bad thing - it certainly served Grandma well many times, but most especially with regards to her 13 children. Many of them have left The church, but rather than disowning any of them, Grandma simply prayed to the appropriate saints for them to return. On the flip side, she really was a good little Catholic girl, especially on the subject of You Know What.

Despite having 13 children Grandma avoided any mention of You Know What - when she could get away with it that is. And she got away with it a great deal for awhile - to the extent of having her children wait at separate bus stops so "people" wouldn't know that she had had You Know What so very many times. Unfortunately for Grandma, my mother, her second child, was a very modern, feminist Catholic girl. As in: the Pope is in Rome, and I'm on the Pill.

My mother's attempts to bring the Feminist revolution home to roost centered around educating her mother and sisters on the subject of You Know What, my Aunt Jane especially, who carried on my mother's tradition of dragging Grandma into Those Kinds of conversations whenever necessary. Many family stories revolve around these conversations - feminist daughters staunchly insisting on being specific about "down there" and the ailments and happenings appertaining, and Grandma staunchly resisting. Surely, we don't need to talk about that.

Nothing like a family of strong minded women.

Its interesting what gets talked about after a death. Joys and slights dominate conversations. In a family of strong minded, passionate people, there are plenty of both. Happily, everyone managed to, if not overlook the slights, keep the ire to a tolerable level during the wake and funeral per se. Beforehand and in private are another matter entirely. Passions ran high. I spent the weekend with my aunt Jane (who has played the parts of mom and older sister to me many times) while she wept and raged and vented. Despite the outpourings of grief and spleen, during the proceedings themselves she did her mother proud and was every inch the lady.

At one point, in the midst of all the venting and ranting and raging, Jane asked me where I'd learned to be so patient. It certainly was an occasion for me to exercise my patience to the fullest, but it got me thinking. I'm not terribly patient, by nature. I'm as fiery and passionate as anyone else in that big, overheated family. Somehow, though, I've learned to channel some of that passion into a trait I think of as steadiness.

There's a concept in yoga, tapas, that means something like inner fire. Its often translated into vigilance or dedication, but it has always made sense to me, on some primal level, that in order to move into stillness, in order to be utterly steady, even in the most ridiculous of yoga postures, one needs a measure of inner fire. So in that sense, my steadiness is an expression of my passionate nature. And somehow I've learned to be steady outside of yoga. If anything, I'm better able to be steady in the midst of an emotional storm or other crisis than in the cool detachment of asana.

When and where did I learn to be steady? Some of it I learned from my own mother, for sure, who could be utterly calm in a crisis, provided she could take charge of things. And some of that comes from Grandma, who definitely had her steady and staunch moments. Several relatives referred to her as a strong person, and strength, in one form or another, has been a recurring theme in the family - in a sense, it has been the root of a good deal of the disagreement about Grandma's health and care in her later years: Ma is strong and doesn't need care -vs- Ma needs care so she can continue to be strong. Its also a root of other conflict in the family: who shall be the strongest and prevail? Strength is undoubtedly a Higgins family value, especially amongst the women.

The strength that is the trademark of the Higgins women is expressed in me as steadiness. Its one of the better expressions, but I've worked on that, too. From dabbling in zen to yoga to the weird philosophical side of radical unschooling, I've been working on this stuff for...er... at least twenty years. It hasn't been easy. Inner fire ain't always pretty when it surges to to surface.

So I spent several days being steady for Jane and (I'd like to think) in honor of my mom and grandma. My own garden, I'm sorry to say, is sadly languishing at the moment, but I hope to get to that soon. I'm intending to plant some more perrennials along the borders and stock the beds with onions and greens.