We'll Always Have Those Garage Sales

My grandmother was serious about Saturday morning garage sailing.  I learned this very quickly when I first moved to Florida 28 years ago.  Grandma’s weekend rituals comprised two things, Sunday morning church, and Saturday morning garage sailing. 

I was never that serious about garage sailing.  I’m sure Grandma dismissed that quirk of mine as coming from … the other side of the family, though my mom was also a thrifter.

I just never saw the appeal.  What I did enjoy though was spending time with my grandmother.  My grandfather never joined us, but he supplemented Grandma’s habit with a bag of quarters that he handed to her before we left.  Grandma was a haggler.  And the bag of quarters told you just how much she was willing to haggle.

Grandma was so focused on getting good deals that if you saw her blue station wagon coming down the street on a Saturday morning, you better watch out, because Grandma saw every open garage door as an invitation to shop whether you were selling anything or not.

I enjoyed garage sailing most when Grandma’s youngest sister, Myrna, was in town.  Myrna was this tiny little spitfire of a thing with a Tennessee accent that turned every word into a song.  She laughed a lot.  She refused to take herself seriously. 

But like Grandma she did take garage sailing seriously.  I joined them one Saturday and they put a penny in a cup for each garage sale.  I think we hit more than a hundred that morning.  And I learned some valuable lessons from that experience.  One, bring a snack.  They don’t have time for your hangry whines.  Two, make sure you are completely dehydrated before getting in the car because they’re not stopping for bathroom breaks either.

One time, the two of them were out garage sailing without me and Grandma walked up to a table filled with sunglasses.  She took hers off, so she could try on the others and finally, she settled on one that she liked and went and paid the woman for them.

It was after Grandma and Myrna were on the road again when they realized Grandma had actually purchased her own sunglasses, the pair she had laid down while she was trying on the others.

Myrna had her own stories involving eyewear, like the time she had her hair done, walked into the place with one pair of reading glasses and left with two pairs, having accidentally taken the hairdresser’s glasses as well.

As the years passed, Grandma’s health faded and she wasn’t well enough to go garage sailing, but Myrna still visited often and when she did, we all went garage sailing.  Even when I moved up here, Myrna and my dad’s cousin Debbie would visit, and we would go garage sailing or thrift store shopping.

It was tradition.

I almost never bought a thing when I was with them.  I was there just to be with family.  When there were too many of us to fit in one car, I would drive my car and Myrna would ride shotgun with me.  We would discuss church, her church and mine, what she loved about her women’s Bible study.  Myrna found a family everywhere she went. 

She read my books and when she was in rehab after a nasty car accident last fall, she read a copy of my spiritual memoir my dad sent to her.  And she texted me this when she finished: “I am so proud of you.  That must have been a difficult book to write … God is good.  He guided you every step of the way.  Your faith is remarkable.  You have learned to serve him in so many ways.  (Heart emoji) Aunt Myrna.”

Let me give you another example that describes Myrna and how much she cared for others.  When she was in that horrific car accident, she had shattered her leg/her ankle and broken her nose from the impact with the air bag.  They put her in the ambulance and she immediately called the memory care facility where Grandma lived to let them know she wouldn’t be visiting that day.  At the same time her ladies church group was supposed to be meeting at her house that day and even though Myrna was in surgery, the women still met at her house because that was what Myrna would want them to do.

Last week, our Morning Prayer reading was about the time that Jesus cast out these demons from two men and, per the demons’ request, sends them into a herd of pigs.  The pigs immediately run screaming off a cliff, fall into the waters below and drown.  Meanwhile, the swineherds are there, probably with their hands on their heads saying, “What just happened?”  Their entire livelihood gone in a second through no fault of their own.  They run into town to share what has happened and the townspeople confront Jesus afterward and say, “Yeah, we need you to leave.”

This is what happens, I said last week, when Jesus works a miracle.  It’s not just the two demoniacs that He freed—He disrupts and upends the entire town.  No one’s life will ever be the same.

And so perhaps, I said, thoughtfully—I hope—we need to look at the distractions in our lives or the bad things that happen to us seemingly randomly and think of them as opportunities instead of spending time mourning what we have lost.

And honestly, I look back on what I said last week and want to smack myself.

Because yeah, ideally it might be helpful to look at bad things in our lives as opportunities, but it also sounds a little like toxic positivity.  Bad things happen to all of us.  We don’t have to force or find meaning in them immediately.  It is okay to sit with our pain for a bit and mourn what we lost.

Last week, Myrna celebrated her birthday.  My dad and Barb Facetimed with her.  She was at physical therapy, but she took their call even when they offered to call back later.  Maybe she knew her time was limited.  I texted her that morning wishing her a Happy Birthday.  She got back to me late at night around 11 pm, long after I had gone to bed, and thanked me and said it was a great birthday.

The next morning, she suffered a massive brain bleed and died.

I find myself mourning not just Myrna, the person, but the end of her story, a story that I was a small part of, but a story I will not be able to join again.  No more garage sailing.  No more thrifting. 

I know that her spirit is home now.  I know she is with her husband and her other sister who passed very young, with her son, who also died too soon.  I know she is with God.  I know she is smiling and laughing.

And if I could I would thank her for letting me be that small part of her life, for sharing her story with me.

And I would offer her these words from Isaiah, “[Myrna] arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of God has dawned upon you … the sun will no more be your light by day, by night you will not need the brightness of the moon.  The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.”

Amen.