The following is a eulogy I delivered for my Grandma Barnhart at a private funeral service on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. She died Oct. 26, 2021, of COVID.
On Monday, when I last saw grandma, I had a feeling time was short—I just knew. So, I chose to read a few prayers over her. I want to share one of those now—one that I thought fit the situation well and one that might have brought not only comfort but peace:
Through your blessing, grace, and guidance, through the power of the light that streams from you:
May all my negative karma, destructive emotions, obscurations, and blockages be purified and removed,
May I know myself forgiven for all the harm I may have thought and done,
May I accomplish this profound practice of enlightenment, and die a good and peaceful death,
And through the triumph of my death, may I be able to benefit all other beings, living or dead.
I thought this prayer fitting because it speaks of freeing yourself of things that may have happened in the past—of forgiveness and forgiving others. It speaks of peace and leaving the world better than it was. It’s a declaration of choosing those things for yourself.
If there was anyone who chose what they wanted and how they did things for themselves, it was grandma. She didn’t do anything that she didn’t want to do, and she could be pretty, pretty stubborn. That stubbornness, or what some of us may have called bullheadedness, I think, that that was what got her through the last 10 years. It’s no secret that she missed grandpa deeply and that she was hurt just as much on the first day after his death as she was ten years later. She missed him. If it wasn’t for this stubbornness and this will to do things on her own terms, I don’t know if she would have had the strength to keep going as long as she did.
I don’t know if any of us realized how sentimental she was. Of course, we heard daily how much she missed grandpa and how much she missed Brutus, but I don’t think it really hit me how truly deeply these things affected her until we were sitting in her room on Wednesday night and going through some of these love letters that we found.
For years after grandpa died, she had written to him like he was there, like she could still speak to him, like this writing was a form of release for her—a way for her to communicate with him. She wanted nothing more than to see him again. I found it heartwarming to see letters from before they were even married that she had written him. In one of those letters, she wrote about her car being broken and her missing grandpa. She said she couldn’t wait for the weekend so she could see him again. It’s interesting to think of a day where you couldn’t just text your loved one and talk to them or pick up your cell phone and FaceTime them like you can now. Instead, she wrote letters, and it’s interesting that they survived all these years later; I mean these letters were around 50 years old.
And then, you know, we found a letter that she wrote to grandpa after they were married, and surely, they lived together by then, right? But writing must have been an important thing for her. We know she wasn’t the best at saying how she felt out loud—with sharing her emotions, but maybe it was easier for her to write it down where she could let it out. I thought it was adorable to see a letter she had written to grandpa after they were married saying how much she loved him and it said something like, “You know couples get in arguments but what’s love without a little bit of fight?” But she also said she was glad to be his wife and that she couldn’t wait to have his children.
I don’t know what she was like growing up in the 70s and 80s, but I know what she was like now, and I think I put it we put it best in the obituary when I said that she had a “fiery, one of a kind spirit,” and she truly did.
I’ll never forget some of the words that others would use to describe her. You know, we might call her “stubborn” or “bullheaded” or “fiery” but those around her they said things like “ornery.” That was the term that I probably heard others use the most to describe her: “ornery.”
A few years back after a surgery she had, she was staying in Vancrest, and I think we were worried how she might have been treating the nurses because you never knew with grandma; you never knew if she was going to be a little difficult or not, but when we got the nurses to the side they would say, “No, we love Carol! She’s so ornery.” She kept them on their toes that’s for sure. It made me laugh because, you know, we were visiting her asking her if she’s treating the nurses right and she said, “I love to grab them, squeeze them, and hug them!” and I thought yeah, I guess that is pretty “ornery,” and that it’s a pretty good term to use when you’re being grabbed and hugged by a 70-year-old lady.
So as I said, she was “fiery,” but she was also one of a kind because how many people do you know that still calls you on a cell phone and leaves you a message like they’re talking to a voice recorder aloud like some of us remember in the early 2000s of 90s before cell phones. You remember? Where you could call somebody and talk out loud (which grandma and grandpa both frequently did). She’d be like, “Hello are you there? Why are you not answering? Come to the phone; it’s me. You know I’m here. Pick up!”
Well, she still did that with a cell phone, and it would always crack me up. A few days ago, I was looking back at some of the voicemails I had from her, and she always started with “Hey, it’s me, Grandma Carol.” That’s the “one of the kind” thing too because you don’t get that much anymore. People have cell phones, so we know who’s calling but for her, she had to let you know.
She also ended every single one of those calls with “Love you.”
You know, before grandpa died, I don’t remember hearing that too much, but his death obviously took a part of her and changed her in such a way that that became an important thing to say. I’ll never forget the first time I heard her tell me she loved me. I think I ran up to my sister and my mom, and I was like, “Is Grandma OK???” I think the answer was no…. she wasn’t. She was changed by that forever.
It’s hard to answer what happens to us after we die because no one ever makes it back to tell the tale, but on Monday, when I saw her, and I grabbed the door handle as I was ready to leave, I looked back at her and I thought, “Wait, if this was the last time you were ever going to see her, what would you say?” So, I turned back, I looked at her, and I said, “Grandma, I know that you miss grandpa and, you know, it’s OK –you don’t have to hold on if you don’t want to. If you’re tired, it’s fine. We all love you. It will be OK.” And then I left, hoping that if she went, she would be with him.
I’ve had this song stuck in my head for the last two weeks. Over the weekend I went hiking with Caesar, and I just kept singing it as we walked through the woods. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Even when I saw her on Monday, I had it playing in my head, even singing it out loud for a little bit. And then as I was thinking about what I would say here today, that song just wouldn’t leave my head—I just kept singing it, and I thought this is a perfect song.
It’s the perfect song, not for me to sing to her or for any of us to her, but it’s a perfect song for her to grandpa, and I want to believe that if there was a song that could be playing as a person is reuniting with their loved one, I think this would be it.
I don’t sing much out loud outside of my car, so don’t judge me, but I do want to sing a couple of these verses because I think they fit so perfectly for her, and thinking about the things she wrote in her journal to grandpa–the poems that she copied down when she thought they fit her love for him–I think that if she would have heard this song, the verses would be in that book as well.
*Sings*
Love of mine
Someday you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light
Or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
that they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark