Visiting Granny and thinking of blessings: Albright

There is a tiny, lovely woman who lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, named Janet Albright. Ever since I could talk, I have called her Granny.

Granny is my favorite person in the whole world to hug. She's 88 years old and less than 5 feet tall, so everyone in my family has to almost double over to get to her.

Granny once worked wonders with her hands, and she loved Christmas more than anybody I know. Every December, my parents' house comes alive with her handiwork: little glittering paper stars that hang like magic from the ceiling; elaborate ornaments that dangle from windows; and one of my father's greatest personal treasures, a ceramic train town that goes around the foot of the family Christmas tree.

Nobody could cook like Granny. When Young Matthew was asked to draw his favorite food, he took a brown crayon and made little fluffy swirls and labeled them "Granny's Fried Shrimp."

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As I drove through the dark Pennsylvania mountains to see Granny last weekend, I kept thinking of these things, and they brought me immense happiness.

But they also brought me an almost unbearable sense of loss.

These next words burn as I type them: Granny exists mostly in our memory now. Last year, she suffered a massive stroke that has left her almost paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to communicate.

These days, she is usually asleep or drowsy. Even when she is alert, we do not know what is going on behind her wide blue eyes.

Is she in pain? When she sees blue skies and sun in her window, does she remember there is a whole wide world out there?

The most brutal question we can't answer is this: Does she recognize us? When my dad wraps his big hands around her little ones and says, "It's your boy," does she hear him? When my grandfather — Pop — nuzzles his forehead against hers and says, "It's me; it's your sweetie," does she comprehend?

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When I am with Granny, I feel this unbearable yearning to hear her talk again. It is like some irresistible force in my chest, jerking me forward, compelling me to hug her, because that is the one thing that still feels like Granny.

I cannot imagine what it must be like for Pop. When he looks at her, you can read in his eyes and his small but invincible smile the visions he must have of her after 67 years of marriage: the girl he dated, the partner he married, the mother who bore his children, the Granny to his Pop.

"It's hard, climbing these hills in front of this," I heard him admit to Granny, though his smile didn't fade. "But God is with us."

Let me tell you about hills.

When I was small, Granny and Pop lived in a big house by a lake that we called The Camp. It had a slogan: "The fun never stops at Granny and Pop's!"

It was a long drive to The Camp from our house, but my brother and I knew we were getting close when we felt the car surfing up and down over a series of hills. To Little Matthew, those hills were tall as mountains.

So when Big Matthew hears Pop talking about climbing hills, they are real hills, looming huge as if they are in front of me. And I see two old, bent bodies struggling impossibly up those hills and I think — what mighty souls these must be.

"Yes," Pop says, to Granny and to himself. "God is with us."

Pop's voice is soft and trembling now, but he is still powerful in prayer.

Before every meal, he talks to God as if he is there at the table. He asks God to bring us health, to bring us safety and, if God so wills it, to bring us prosperity.

And then he tells God something he has been telling him for as long as I can remember: "Thank you for your many blessings."

Pop sees blessings everywhere: in card games and phone calls with loved ones and teaberry ice cream.

There is the woman he met at the supermarket who helps him shop for groceries and brings him Frosties from Wendy's and takes him to see a big bridge that is under construction so that the gears in his engineer's mind can turn again.

There are his children, who have built marvelous lives and loving families; his grandchildren, who are building homes and lives of their own, and who are starting to have little giggling great-grandchildren whose great big smiles he can look at on his computer screen whenever he wants.

Yes, Pop would tell you that everywhere he looks he is surrounded with blessings, and so is Granny, whether she still knows it or not.

What supreme grace — to be toiling up such impassable hills, yet to be thinking always of blessings.

Granny and Pop will not be on this Earth much longer. When they are gone, it will leave a hole somewhere inside me.

But the memories will remain, floating in my head like Granny's glittering paper stars.

And so will this lesson of mountains and blessings, which I'll treasure with the same reverence my father has Granny's train town.

I just wish I had Granny back — even if only for a moment — to thank her myself.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.