Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  Milma and I washed and dressed her in her best black dress. I fixed her hair, and Milma put a lace fichu at her neck and fastened it with the Cameo pin she had given her last year for Christmas. We waited until morning to tell the child­ren, who cried but seemed comforted by our simple words. Grand­mother looked lovely. Milma had a coffin delivered to the house, and we arranged her in it. She spread the word about her death, and we were inundated with food and sympathy.

  Milma officiated at her funeral although it was very difficult for her. She knew her mother would not have wanted her to say those things about her which only she and I knew.

  The sermon she gave was so beautiful I decided to write it down so that neither I nor the children nor Milma herself would ever forget what she had said.

  14: Memories

  The sermon about Grandmother went as follows:

  “May faith in humanity teach us how to live! May hope in humanity strengthen us in need! May love for humanity fill our hearts, giving peace within us and with all men.

  “With you a part of me hath passed away, for in the peopled forest of my mind, a tree made leafless by this wintry wind shall never again don its green array. Chapel and fireside, country roads and bays have something of their friendliness resigned. Another, if I would, I could not find. And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure you in my memory. A great deal of my mother is left.

  “It is one of the true miracles of life that no single person is ever identical with any other. It is certain that before she came into the world, there had never been another just like my mother, and it is equally certain that there never will be another. As truly as the sun rises and sets each day, she has become a part of the very structure of the universe, and the beneficent influence which she cast about into our lives and countless other lives inevitably lives on.

  “Hope comes to us, not as a refuge for those who fear, but as the only possible solution for a problem as yet too deep for human thinking. A dead and faithless universe is unthinkable. Out of desperation, new powers of vision are born. We are drawn, and we are driven, by forces—by a hand of destiny—too great for our understanding. Nevertheless we pass on, increasingly confi­dent of the way we take, and ever more certain that we share the great venture of the eternal withersoever we may go.

  “Would you have life if it be a short life or a long life? Would you have life even though one day that life ceased to be, and the strange being which is yourself flickers and dies like a light blown out and perished in darkness? Would you have all the sweetness and the beauty, the sharpness and the hunger, the toil and the sacrifice? Would you buy with the heavy price the bright years of being?

  “Let there be often within the hearts a time of blessed quiet, when golden memories are bright again, and when we recall the wonderful gifts of life to all of us. May every grateful thought increase the self-dedication of each of us to generous living. May we rise in spirit above any walls of grief or self-pity that may tend to shut us in. May we welcome the days and years that remain to us, and to the utmost of our ability fill them with large thoughts and kind deeds. May each of us be united with others by ties of mutual affection and service. May grief be taken up into gratitude, and may we find our lives by losing them.

  “Let the thoughts of this moment be thoughts of tenderness and gratitude—tenderness because of the loved one whose body we lay to rest, tenderness for all that has been lovable through the years, tenderness toward every human frailty. Gratitude for a life known intimately and held in honor. Gratitude for the strong ties of family affection. Gratitude for the high privilege of knowing and sharing with one another life’s experiences of joy and sorrow.

  “To die a little later or a little sooner does not matter. But to live bravely, to love life, to see how beautiful the trees and the mountains and the sea, to enjoy work because it produces food for life. We love life because we live in danger. We do not fear death because we understand life and death are necessary to each other.

  “May we go forth to the duties of our days with willing hands and honest minds, with faith in the power of good over evil, ready to take our places in the world of men, expecting to be forgiven—only as we forgive others, working and hoping for that day when ties of brotherhood shall bind together every member of the human family.

  “Amen.”

  Sermon over, we gathered together with the Virginia and Alango congregations into the social room downstairs. Everyone, it seemed, had brought food. We ate open-face sandwiches, chocolate and white and yellow cakes with white and chocolate frostings, gelatins too numerous to mention, homemade pickles and relishes, trays of crackers and cheese, cookies and bars of every size and description, hot strong coffee, and sweet delicious punch. It was wonderful for me to see my own mother again and Ronny and Aini and Eino. Aini had married the previous summer, and her husband, Karl Luoma, seemed to care for her a good deal. She was heavy with child, a child that would be born very soon. My mother, too, was very considerate of her, making sure she sat down, put her feet up, and was served a plate of goodies. Evidently their decision to marry had been a hasty one, made during the time that “Risto was attending a meeting of Unitarian ministers in Boston” and so had been performed very simply by the current justice of the peace. They had let me know about it—after the fact—and considering the weight and size of the baby within her—that might have been the motivating factor in the hurry of their marriage.

  I had missed all of them, but it was almost as if they belonged to another time and place so engrossed had I been with the Lappalas—with Milma and Grandmother and the children. Milma, of course, made her way from table to table, greeting people and thanking them for coming, for supporting her and the children, for bringing food. She and I were especially proud of the children, who followed her example, young Risto especially, but Tellervo and Daniel, too, walking among the tables and thanking people for their sympathy and understanding.

  Afterwards, the members of each of the church boards came across the back yard and into the house. I made sure there was plenty of coffee and punch and took the extra food (and there was a lot of it) into the parsonage to serve them. Most of the board members were men, but their wives and children came, too. Before we knew it, their children were playing with the Lappala children. I thought to myself that that was good, that the children had endured enough sadness and that there should be time now for them to play.

  As for myself, I had emptied and cleaned Grandmother’s room during the days between her death and the funeral. There was nothing more for me to do. The parsonage was immaculately clean—the children had each done his or her part to make that happen. And for once there was plenty of food. I sat down on a kitchen chair and let the tears flow silently. They had been held in for too long.

  I sat there and cried—for Risto, for Milma’s losses, for the children, for myself. Grandmother had become a mentor to me during the time I had spent with the Lappalas—almost as if she had been my grandmother, too, unlike the ones who lived in Finland with whom we’d had very little contact.

  I guess I must have cried for at least an hour before Milma happened to come into the kitchen, saw me, put her arms around me, and gave me the love she shared with every living being—but especially for her family, of whom I had inadvertently become a member, and an important one at that.

  She thanked me again for all of the loving care I had given Grandmother. “We never would have managed without you,” she repeated over and over. “And you never lost your temper! You were always kind and gentle to her, even when she was at her worst—and believe me, I do remember some very bad days.”

  So did I. As I wrote about caring for Grandmother earlier, I had left out—or intentionally forgotten—all of the difficult times: the times she had shouted at me to “Leave me alone!” and “Why do you bother me so? What you’re doing hurts!”—the times she had thrown things at me—anything she
could reach at the moment—her pillow, the cup or glass by her bedside table, even once her whole plate of food, which I had to clean up from her bedding, the floor, and from her. It had not all been sunshine and roses. There had been times when I had been stressed to the limit of my patience. But, thank God, I had never gone beyond that limit. I had accepted everything she did with the same equanimity with which I had accepted everything I had to do for her. Sometimes it had been very very difficult, especially when she grew angry with Milma or the children or me for some of that she called a “deliberate slight.” Evidently Sylvie, her older sister, had been the source of much anger in her, and as she came to see me in her shoes, so to speak, the anger became directed at me.

  That had been almost easier to take than the way she had taken her frustration with her inability to find words, to think clearly, to do for herself the little things that one does each day out on Milma, whom she had seen in the guise of her mother. That a mother would not understand what she meant even when the words wouldn’t come out right, what she was thinking when she couldn’t express the thoughts, and what she wanted to do when she was unable to act for herself seemed to irritate her even more than I did. And Milma accepted her anger as I tried to do in my ministrations—with grace, sometimes with humor, always with infinite patience.

  The children were another matter completely. At times she could barely contain her displeasure with their noise, their constant talk and laughter, the freedom with which they moved. I knew she was not herself. Were she herself, she would have shown them all of the love and understanding that had been the hallmark of her care for them through the years. But they seemed to draw out the nastiest part of her. Sometimes when one of them would step inside the room, she would rant, “Get out of here, you dirty child!” or “Why don’t you just leave?”

  Thank God those episodes tended to be short-lived. Most of the time she lived in a state of perpetual—what can I call it?—inanimation? Most of the time she accepted what I did for her with gratitude. Most of the time she expressed her thankfulness in words and sometimes in deeds, taking time to pat my hand or to brush her hand across my head as if in a benediction. Finally and near the end, more and more she became a completely different person—one who sensed what was approaching, saw a light at the end of a dark tunnel, and waited with as much patience as she could muster the time when she would reach that light. Sometimes she saw her mother holding it; sometimes it was her husband. But always it was someone she loved—even Risto. She sought that light constantly, talked to me about it whenever the words would come, and looked forward to the time when she, too, could be one with it.

  Those were the times I chose to remember when I wrote my earlier account of her illness. Dr. Raihala, too, had given me much support, confident that I was doing the right things, and even a kind of loving spirit. Perhaps only he knew the fullness of what Grandmother and I were experiencing together, and he shared with me and encouraged me to share with him the whole of what was happening. I sometimes didn’t know what I would do without him.

  Once, when he happened to arrive during a particularly difficult moment, he told me, “You’re doing the whole family a great favor—offering them a great gift—with what you’re doing not only for Mrs. Tikkanen but also for them. I hope they’re aware and are showing you their appreciation by taking as much of the daily work as possible off of your shoulders.”

  Thankfully, I was able to reassure him on that account.

  “Good,” was his only comment as he took his black bag and headed back out the front door.

  As the years had gone by, it had become harder and harder for me to leave the Lappalas. But one Sunday afternoon several months after the funeral, Milma called me into her office right after church and broached the subject of money. Once Grandmother died, her share of the expenses was gone (although she had left a small trust for each of the children to be used to continue their education past high school). Everything else she left for Milma and the children, but it was mainly her furniture and clothing and her recipes, which I had copied faithfully and cherish to this day.

  It had become clear to me during the weeks following Grandmother’s death that money was scarce in the Lappala household, in spite of Milma’s having two congregations. She had filled Reverend Risto’s place with scarcely any rolling of the waves of either church. She had seemed to pick up right where her husband had left off, which was hardly surprising because they had worked together on every aspect of church life. Except for being forbidden to be a part of the area’s larger church community—she had been virtually locked out of participation with any of the other pastor’s groups because she was a woman—she was able to do what Risto had done. Most of the other pastors, all men, looked askance both at having a woman as a minister, and, in addition, at the liberality of her church’s view of Christianity and religion, which they fervently and as a group disallowed.

  Of course, she held a firm place in the hearts of every Unitarian in Alango and Virginia. She led them in believing that Jesus was a great teacher whose message was one of love, faith, and hope but who had not necessarily been a divine being and that there was a God, a spirit, the knowledge of which was one we accepted on faith. “As we came from God so shall we return to him to render our account” was a tenet she propounded during her sermons, in Sunday school, and during confirmation. She was much more “theistic” a teacher/minister than the other pastors realized. But then, they never took time to talk with her or to ask about her beliefs. They simply forbid her to join any of their groups. She was, therefore, cast aside from the rest of the religious community and, by reason of her being our minister, so were we.

  I remember that, back in the “Hall days,” we were also unlike many of those who gathered there on Sunday mornings. Some of them had professed to believe that Communism was the answer to the woes of the world and thus cut themselves off completely from organized religion. A few families even left to go to Russia to begin a new life—to their infinite sorrow once they got there.

  As I thought back over my time with the Lappala family, I blessed Grandmother, who had been a never-ending source of joy to me. I had loved speaking Finnish with her partly because she spoke a different kind of Finnish from the kind I had learned at home. My mother had never been schooled in the language, but Grandmother had. I had noticed the difference right away. I had asked her to correct me when I erred, and she had persevered so that by the time I left, I was able to carry on a brief conversation with the four ladies who continued to come for tea once a week. All of them spoke Grandmother’s kind of Finnish—a literate kind. She also taught me to read Finnish. It gave her great joy as I progressed to hear me read aloud passages from the Bible and from the Työmies, the Finnish paper that arrived every week. She had warned me, however, that sometimes articles might take on a Communist or at least a Socialist slant and that I should be wary of accepting everything written in it as truth. That, too, was a good lesson. Heretofore, I had considered everything written down as sacred, above reproach. She taught me to be selective in my responses to my reading.

  By the time I was nearing eighteen, all three of the children were advancing in school in Virginia—Risto in high school, Tellervo not far behind, and Daniel progressing his way through grade school with happy abandon. I had considered leaving before Grandmother became ill, and I was forever grateful I did stay not only to help with Grandmother but also to learn. Risto helped me as much as I helped her with his classes in English, history, geography, mathematics, general science, and penmanship. I knew I would never match his beautiful hand-writing, but I had really enjoyed sharing his homework, reading his assignments and discussing them with him, and studying the mathematics that had seemed so incomprehensible to me earlier with someone to whom it was familiar and even simple. I had learned so much during that year! Not only about myself from my work with Grandmother but about the world from Risto’s classes.

  I wa
s proud of the children’s ability to entertain themselves. They had a marble game that had been given to Milma by one of her Alango parishioners with marbles and instructions. That and checkers and chess, to which Reverend Risto had tried to introduce Risto and which he in turn taught us.

  But I’m digressing, perhaps intentionally, because the scene to follow was so fraught with pain that, even now, I can hardly bear to relive it. I had been aware for some time that the joint congregations did not reimburse the Lappalas adequately. The Alango congregation was made up of farmers like my parents, who were charter members, and their payment often consisted of the results of their gardening. We always received enough potato sacks to last us through the winter if we put them into a dark corner of the cellar where it remained very cool. Carrots we put into a large stone Red Wing container, layering sand atop every row. They, too, lasted us through the winter as did the onions, which we wove into garlands of a sort and hung from the joists downstairs in the cellar. Milk, cream, and butter came in endless supply as did chunks of venison, which we canned, and partridge and sharptail in the fall, which we ate and also canned.

  The Virginia congregation provided most of the money because of the wealth of four of its members. Each one promised to donate a sizeable amount during “pledge week” held in January at the beginning of each new year, and they often added to their pledges by putting money in the collection baskets passed during each church service.

  Nonetheless, I knew there were many other uses to which Milma could put the money she had been paying me and that I had been sending home. The children needed new clothing. Each one was growing so quickly that Risto’s left-overs rapidly fit Daniel. Risto and Tellervo needed clothes for school—including shoes. Although both the Ketola’s and the Reid’s stores offered credit and generous open accounts to Milma, she still needed cash to pay for the gas used for the stove, washing machine, and iron, and for the use of a telephone, which had come to be a necessity for her because anyone in Virginia who had one could reach her for help at any time—and did.