there but for the Grace

This is my favorite time of day, hands down. It is well past evening, but not yet late enough for me to worry about not getting enough sleep. I’ve shucked responsibilities and clothes. My bedroom window is yawning wide, the sweet country air dancing in and out as she pleases. All I can hear are the crickets, and Gracie’s voice muted through the floorboards as she reads her dad a bedtime story. I am utterly at peace.

We haven’t been home long. Tonight was the spring music concert, and in a town of fewer than 1,000 people, most all of them attend. There’s only one school here, grades k-12, and everyone knows everyone. Everyone’s woes are shared.

Tonight there was a silent auction and a raffle to benefit a teacher, a man whose 32-year-old wife was stricken with lung cancer. Everyone had worked very hard on the event, carefully planned it out for months. Throughout the concert they kept pausing to announce the winners, interrupting the practiced screeches of fifth grade violinists and the enviable bravado of kindergarten soloists. The announcer kept choking up, though, as did a good chunk of the audience, because the young woman didn’t make it to her own benefit. She died the night before last. She left behind a three-year-old daughter.

My own three-year-old daughter squiggled like a bored ferret on my lap throughout the concert, chattering endlessly, completely oblivious to the somber tone around her. She kept tugging at my necklace, begging to wear it, and I kept saying no without really thinking about it — simply because no seems a logical answer when diamonds and kids are involved. But then something gave me pause, and I changed my mind, unclasping the anniversary gift from my own neck and carefully placing it around Eva’s. “I thought dis was your peshal neckwass!” she cried, shocked. “It is, it’s very, very special,” I said. “But so are you.” I wish I had words for the look she gave me, for the way I felt as she buried her face into my chest in a furious hug. I soaked the curls at the crown of her head with tears I couldn’t hold in.

After the concert, I ran into another widower, a man who lost his wife a few days before Christmas this past year. I hugged him and he held on a little longer than expected, though not nearly long enough for me. He was there to watch his grandchildren perform for the first time without their grandma. He said every one of these “firsts” is profoundly hard. I couldn’t help but think about how many firsts the teacher, newly widowed, has ahead of him.

This is my favorite time of day, hands down, because everyone is home and accounted for. For at least one more night in this unpredictable world, spinning like a top, askance and wildly beautiful, everyone I love is safe.