Journal Entry - Who's at the Door?

LIke many writers, I begin writing projects by scribbling notes, memories, ideas and experiences into my journal. (I’ve been keeping one since I was a senior in high school.) Some would call them my writer’s notebooks. Once I think, after several notes, that I am in the midst of a potential project, I begin to title my notes, so that when and if I return to my journals after the project has launched, I can find them. As Grandma Eckman was a living part of my life for twenty years, I have made many journal entries. Here’s one:

“Yesterday’s Bible lesson theme was about calling – what does God call us to do or be. In the gospel lesson from John (1:43-51), Jesus calls Philip, who brings along Nathanael. And the Old Testament lesson was 1 Samuel 3:1-20. This is when as a youth the prophet Samuel is called by God. However, he is young, inexperienced and at first doesn’t know that God is calling him.

“In fact, at first, he thinks he is being called by his master Eli, the high priest. Even Eli doesn’t understand initially, because both are asleep when Samuel receives the call.

“So—what struck me in this yesterday was something that’s been happening to my grandmother (not Grandma Eckman but Dee Curry, my mother’s mother). She’s 92. She doesn’t always sleep well. She spends a lot of her sleep time, more worn out (“I’m just worn out,” she said to me yesterday) than awake or asleep.

“However, at her age, I wonder if much of Grandma’s sleep is more like how I was in the hospital after my jaw surgery. Still under the effects of anesthesia, I could hear nearly everything. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I wanted to sleep it off. I would close my eyes, feel like I fell into a deep sleep and wake up. The clock was right in front of me. Only ten minutes had passed.

“But I wonder if this is how Grandma sleeps. She hears things and gets confused by them. There is a train of thought she has created to having a neighbor—a man—calling or knocking on her door or window. When she answers the phone, he sometimes talks to her (she says) or not. There’s no one at the window. And no one at the door when she opens it.

“Maybe she opens the door, maybe not.

“But when she first told me this, I encouraged her strongly to never answer the door in the middle of the night. Further, I told her she shouldn’t answer the phone. Only those who knew her would do either—and NEVER in the middle of the night. This disturbed me.

“Until yesterday when I began to consider that Grandma may be receiving messages from God—telephone calls, a visitor at the door. These could be—well—death. She doesn’t know. And she’s not ready yet—or maybe she is. She says she’s not.

“In Grandma Eckman’s case, she fought death, too. But she fought everyone. She was different. Her death—I think she may have been afraid of death. After all, she had kind of a wild life. Maybe she saw death as one of her husbands and felt it might be hell.

“Further, Grandma Eckman converted to Catholicism after she moved to what we called Little Sisters of the Poor. What if she started confession—talking to her priest? How would that have affected her? Guilt? Penance? Just wondering.”