My paternal grandmother, Arabella, was a gorgeously tragic woman, very Katharine Hepburn in appearances and spirit, if not circumstance. In the summer between 6th and 7th grade, I spent the summer, along with my younger cousin K, with my grandmother and grandfather in Tulare, California, just outside of Bakersfield. It was actually a remarkably cool experience, though I can only imagine how exhausting it must have been for my grandparents. We spent time tending to their modest walnut orchard, learned how to ride and care for their three Arabian horses, Bell, Star, and Roberta, and hit the road in their big yellow Ford truck, K and I riding in the bed of the truck watching the scenery wiz by backwards as we made our way to Disneyland.
Arabella had two favorite sayings. One was a simple, Tired of living, a-feard of dying: that’s me. Very poignant, and yet very country at the same time. The second one is a little more elegant, but it evokes the same feelings whenever I think of it. This is the one that popped into my head today, after an odd day of emotional ups and downs at work. It goes like this:
Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art and dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul.
It turns out that this is a piece from a Longfellow poem called A Psalm of Life. It always makes me a feel a twinge of melancholy when I think of Arabella sighing deeply and reciting these lines.
Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave really isn’t its goal… is it?
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/casabelle/
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