I have very few memories of my great-grandmother, Frieda (Buss) Rupnow. She died when I was 5 years old. I remember the day she died, though. My mother was wearing a burgundy & blue Mount Mary College shirt and cut-off jean shorts when the phone rang. It was my grandma. My mom sat on the staircase as she held the phone to her ear and I heard her say, "I knew I should have gone to see her yesterday." She died in the summertime, and hers was the first of many funerals I remember attending. I remember looking out at a sea of headstones, wondering what they meant. I didn't ask. I just watched. I didn't really know what "dying" meant at that age. I knew it made people sad, but that was about all I knew. I just have a very vivid picture in my head from the cemetery that day. I've been to the same corner of that cemetery many times since then...to lay the bodies of three of her four children, and the wife of one of those children, close to the bodies of Frieda and her husband, William Sr.
I believe that only the bodies lie there in that cemetery. That's just the place where we can go to remember them all in one place. I do not know for sure, and I suppose no one here on this earth can tell you with 100% certainty, either, where the spirits that once inhabited those bodies truly are. Only faith explains that one--and that is as far as I'll take that. Mortality, fate, and eternity are not my area, and I prefer it that way. I will leave that to one who's knowledge far exceeds my own. However, regardless of what you believe or do not believe, we all carry something of our ancestors within us. It lives in our thoughts as memories, our hearts as feelings, our spirit as emotions/temperaments, or even very literally in our very cells as DNA from those whom we call "family." I think I must have a lot of my great-grandmother's DNA then. From stories, artifacts, and my own few memories, I have ascertained that she was a woman of delightful wit. My mother is constantly quoting some of her most notorious one-liners and anecdotes. My personal favorite is hearing both my mother and my grandmother quote her (with an accent that I cannot replicate in mere typeface), "Well, it just is what it is." (if I were to attempt to replicate the accent, the pronunciation would be, "it just 'eees, vat it 'eeees") In German "w"="v" sound, and vowels are much longer than English. Nonetheless, I love that philosophy. I find myself living and finding a great deal of comfort in that phrase. It calms me. To me, it helps me to remember "let be." In my life, I struggle so much with trying to force things to go my way, to change them, or to prevent them. Most of the time, this leads to frustration at best. More often it leads to that proverbial feeling of banging my head against a wall. It is what it is, and it will be, what it will be. Rest in that, and trust it. We are held in a love and compassion that can sustain us through the changing ebb and flow of the things upon which we cannot force change. My very wise great-grandmother understood that...or reminder herself and others of it often, too.
Me and Frieda both love owls. I have two, retro ceramic owls that I "claimed" when we cleaned her house after she passed away. (Mind you, I was 5) Somehow, despite moving countless times since college, I always have these owls. They're actually sort of ugly, but they're wise. They're spunky. They remind me that no matter where I am, how hard life is, or how bored I am--I have the same feisty German spirit that refuses to let anything stop her. When Frieda didn't know how to do something, she figured it out. When a doctor asked her how old she was, she transposed the numbers to make herself younger. She weaved countless rugs from old, torn clothing. When she was bored, she crocheted beautiful lace-like trims and blocks of gorgeous tatted stitching. My mother kept these things after she died, and I create artwork and design clothing inspired by these. She was a short, stocky, and strong woman with wispy, silver hair that was nothing more than a few strands by the time she died, but from all of the stories I have heard, she never apologized for who she was.
"It is what it is."
I love the owls and the lace. There's more of her inside of me than a shared admiration for elegance and wisdom. Her strength, humor, stubbornness, wit, and determination inspire me. Her energy and wisdom infuse themselves into my cells.
Yes. More now than ever before, I proudly say, with my great-grandma Frieda, "It just is what it is." My heart rests with joy in the simple, "make-do-with-what-you-have" present moment.
