Redemption

If you know me, you know I am a mess. Not in the figurative sense, though I suppose that is up for debate, but in the literal sense. It's not that I don't shower or clean things, it's just that I am disorganized. Appallingly so. I reformatted my computer in the spring of 2003, and I never got around to installing a new email client. For the last two years I have been using NYU's web interface to check my email. How unbearable. Anyway, I've been feeling more progressive than usual lately, so I installed Mozilla Thunderbird and set it to task on downloading all of the emails that have been sitting on the NYU server since March of 2003. It is here that I will assert that the bing-bong sound that plays when you get mail should be a lot more thunderous when the slider it accompanies says, "You have 768 unread messages."

Then began the yet unfinished task of sorting through these. Almost all of them are going to be deleted, but I had a feeling, which was affirmed within minutes, that I shouldn't just highlight them all and send them flying from memory. Among the first things I found was an email from my grandmother, written in April of 2003. She mentions her new computer, and how it hurt her hands to type too much but she wanted to say hello, and she hopes to hear from me soon.

I should probably tell you flat out that my grandmother passed away earlier this year. Not before I got to talk with her many times more, but as is usual, much too soon. She said measureless things to me which have planted me firmly where I am, but I feel it’s somehow incomplete that I didn't get to talk with her more. I was not lucky enough to see her as much as the rest of our family, maybe didn't know her as well as I could have, and I still feel an unsettling lack in that empty space. She was the perfect grandma, wise and caring beyond her long years. She could break my worries with a few slim words. She showed me that I can believe in love, that this whole earth is bound up and washed in it, at a time when I was not so sure it was.

All of this is why I felt sick when I found this two-year-old email. I know myself. I didn't respond. I let it sit there, thinking that a bit later perhaps would be a great time to write a nice long letter, but certainly not now. New mail came in and since I did the same thing with each one, hers sank beyond my sight and I just...forgot. Here was an absolute mistake. There really was no correcting this horrible lack of judgment, this reckless dearth of respect for such a blessing. I didn't have to look, nor did I want to. I knew I didn't respond. Waste. Loss. And worse: regret.

I felt sick and I did the obvious thing. I read her letter over, and then I gave up on searching through the mass. Nothing else could be this important; I didn't care to see what else I had overlooked in the last few years. I took a break, made some dinner, even did some dishes (because I am quite fine at cleaning up things not made of paper, be it virtual or actual). Then I thought I'd go through and delete a few more emails before bed. It's not like anything I would find was going to make me feel worse about it than I already did.

The thought was absolutely accurate. The very first thing I found when I sat down was a copy of a birthday card I had mailed to my grandmother, not a week after her letter. It even had a note attached. A picture of her dog and a suggestion that we should force it to wear a birthday hat. So now I am thinking, and I can almost hear her saying, that if you are going to go looking through your past, make sure you look through all of it. Maybe the things left unsaid are not as important as things that weren't. I'm not sure why I forgot about sending that card, but I suppose if I hadn't, the remembering would not have felt nearly as good.

Still, I miss you Mamaw.