When the perfect is come.

Life is contrast. Light and dark. Old and new. Life and death. And then there is all of that space in between.

My grandma died a week ago Wednesday. The mother of my mother slipped quietly away from the hospital, the confines of her age, the pain in her body, and into the calm.

It was peaceful. She was surrounded by her four living children. You know, each of them looks like her in their own way. And we spent the next few days remembering her together.

Of course there were things to go through, and that always brings up stories. Old pictures spilled out of drawers, and someone found love letters. The interior of her house had been frozen in time since the late sixties. She was a constant in all of our lives.

I saw her a couple of hours after she died, lying on the hospital bed with the sheet mostly covering her face. Death makes us the most vulnerable, small and weak. We began the preparations for the funeral, and we celebrated Easter with radiant hope.