Little Lamp

For Grace

The bedside lamp turned on around 3:30 am, summoning from sleep.

Grace.

It’s an alabaster lamp with a blue and white striped lampshade, one that I saved from the giveaway pile after Grace passed. So many things had already been tossed out by her son in blind grief. Shabby chic furniture, small paintings done by local artists, tarnished silver baby cups from Europe.

This lamp holds every memory I keep from her coastal California home. Long lazy weekend visits, walks on the beach, Dutch breakfast with a foggy garden view where her little stone cherubs kept watch. Her crooked girlish smile, the way she hummed and sang in her micro kitchen as she prepared tea.

After she died I spent two weeks solo in her small home, trying to recover from burnout, grieving and celebrating her all at once. I cleaned her rooms, let in the healing October sunlight and sea air, played “La vie en rose” in memory of the perfect San Francisco day when she sang this song at a gay karaoke bar in the Castro. I walked to the beach on streets lined with oak and pine and cypress trees adorned by veils of lacey lichen, and felt her deep love of Pacific Grove and the wild coastal waves. At night I slept in her bedroom with the toile drapery and kept the alabaster lamp on for company and remembered her ageless spirit, but also felt her loneliness in the wake of a departed husband and distant sons.

She rarely showed the depth of her heartbreak to us. In my memory she’s walking beside the waves in her sun hat, sighing, proclaiming in her bright clear voice, “I never get tired of this place. It’s paradise.” That’s where she and I connected. Adoration of home and ocean and the simple pleasures of beautiful things, sharing them with loved ones.

I woke a bit discombobulated, my cat next to me in the light, but also feeling Grace with us. Knowing on some half-awake level having the light on was odd, but comforting, I fell quickly asleep again.

Don’t forget my light.