“Being as old as I am, you lose a lot of the people you love. But you wanna know the best part about being as old as I am? Watching them all live.”
– Ava Lea Gray
On April 11th, 2016, the Moody family, and the entire world for that matter, lost one of its best members, Ava Lea Gray. To me she was a great-grandmother “NeeNee”, to my dad, a grandmother, and to many others, a family member or friend. But to all of us, one of the best people we knew and will ever know. After 101 years on this Earth, Jesus called her home. And though our selfish hearts long to hear her voice again, to see that contagious smile one more time, or even just to play one more game of Rummikub, we don’t ask, “Why God?” We know why, 101 years is an incredibly long time and there’s a point in all of our lives where Jesus says, “That’s enough, come home now”. We were just lucky enough to have been blessed with NeeNee for over a century.
There’s that quote, “It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.” But let me tell you, NeeNee had the best of both worlds with just as much, if not more, life in her years as years in her life. In the past 101 and years NeeNee has seen A LOT! She was there in 1920 when women gained the right to vote in the U.S. She lived through the Great Depression and prohibition. She saw World War I and II and watched Jackie Robinson step up to the plate, and gazed on with millions of others around the world as the first man set foot on the moon. By the time September 11th rolled around, NeeNee had seen her fair share of heartbreak, but had garnered enough love and faith to also know that we would only bounce back stronger, and we did. But if you ever asked NeeNee what the most important thing in her life was, she probably would grab your hands and gaze up at you with big blue eyes and shout “I have to choose just one?” and then proceed to tell you how her family, her friends, and her faith were the three dearest things to her heart.
NeeNee was a huge inspiration to me, not just because living to be 101 years old is an incredible feat, but also because she walked so closely with Jesus that I remain convinced she was actually an angel. Her passing was anticipated, but nevertheless, met me like a punch in the gut. On the drive back from a concert in Orlando, my dad told my brother and I that NeeNee had been admitted to hospice care, so when my mom knocked on my door at 11 o’clock last night I didn’t even need her to open her mouth before I started crying. I denied her requests to lie down with me, wanting only to be alone with my tears and God.
This morning I woke up and tried my best to carry out my normal routine, if I could get through today, I could get through tomorrow and soon it’ll get easier, I told myself. Then I cried in the shower. The school day was long and slow, although I had not directly told any of my friends, they saw through my mom or sister’s FaceBook and Instagram posts that NeeNee had passed. I assured them I was fine and then locked myself in a bathroom stall to cry some more. When the last bell rang releasing me from school I walked/jogged to my car, trying to escape the tears that threatened my tear ducts once again. Breaking down, I called my mom sobbing as I sat at a stoplight. I told her that I missed NeeNee, a lot, and that I was sad she was gone. She tried her best to reassure me, concerned, I think, that I was driving and crying simultaneously. She mentioned that she was at TJ-Maxx, but would get home soon after I would.
When I got home, I immediately pulled on my rollerblades. For some reason, the repetitive motion of pushing my body forward with four wheels in a straight line on each foot soothes me, so when I’m sad, stressed, or really feeling any sort of emotion, I “blade it out.” When I got home my mom was still out, so I hopped in the shower to further cleanse myself of the emotions I was tired of carrying around. When I got out, my mom was standing in the kitchen and asked me to come down so she could “talk to me.” In the Moody house, being called downstairs to be “talked to,” generally isn’t a good thing. I hesitated at the top of the stairs and my mom saw this, “it’s about NeeNee,” she assured me. And for some reason, my heart skipped a beat, and for some reason I thought “maybe, the doctors made a mistake, maybe, she was just asleep.” I wouldn’t put it above NeeNee to pull a prank like that. But I reigned in my imagination and told myself, “No Emma, don’t do that to yourself.” My mom stood in the kitchen and proceeded to tell me that after I called her while she was at TJ-Maxx she wandered around aimlessly for a bit, praying that I would find peace and comfort in spite of her passing. She found herself standing in front of a shelf of candles and pulled one off. Fast forward to me and her standing in the kitchen, she hands me a small wax candle, I turn it over in my hands and read the label, “Ava & Emma”. I lost it.
Last night, when I talked to God, I asked Him for one thing. I prayed that He would let me say bye to NeeNee. When I woke up this morning the tears I cried were a mix of grief from loss, but also disappointment that I’d missed my “only chance to say bye one last time” in my dreams. But in true NeeNee fashion, her farewell showed up, “better late than never” she would’ve said. Even more interesting, the scent of my Ava & Emma candle is bergamot and green violet. Not only is it slightly reminiscent of the sweet scent of Neenee’s Houston home, but bergamot, a citrus commonly used in aromatherapy, was mixed with oil extracted from the Cypress tree in Biblical times. The cypress tree’s scientific name is Cupressus sempervirens, and “sempervirens” means “ever-living.” How fitting, as NeeNee begins her eternal life in Heaven, I am comforted by the reminder that the “eternal flame” of her love has not left this Earth. Goodbye NeeNee, I love you too.
