Tales From The South: The Purple Balloon
I sat in my small gray Dodge Colt in All Souls Cemetery in Long Beach, Calif., writing a note to attach to a purple balloon.
It was 1991, and I couldn’t even remember my grandmother’s favorite color … purple just seemed to fit. I also had brought along some purple irises with a splash of pencil-yellow in the centers, wrapped in green, crinkly florist paper. I wrote to God Himself instead of writing a letter to Nanny directly. It seemed more theologically honest to me.
“Dear God,” I began my note. “Thank you for your love expressed to me through my Nanny. It was a reflection of Your love given to us through Jesus Christ, and I am grateful for the unconditional love from a grandmother in my life. Even though it was not for very long, I’m grateful for my Nanny and I will never forget her. Love, Timothy.”
My grandmother had died 25 years earlier at 55, from not one but two types of cancer, as if one weren’t enough to snuff the life from her petite frame.
My mother would carry my drawings and watercolors to the hospital — little messages of devotion from a fan to a celebrity — and my grandmother would keep them in the room. For some reason, though I knew she loved my two brothers very much, I was a great delight to her. She had always liked my art.
Nanny wasn’t a Norman Rockwell grandmother. She could cook like any woman who was reared on a farm at the beginning of the last century, but there was no snowy white bun or grandmotherly apron. She loved to watch reruns of the old Western T.V. show “Sugarfoot.” I remember in the afternoons when she sat on our golden-yellow vinyl couch in the paneled den of our suburban home, sipping a Lucky Lager beer and smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. She often would be dressed in black capris and a printed shirt, wearing metal framed cat’s eye glasses with her short, dark brown hair styled in bangs.
What I remember most about my grandmother was her total acceptance of me. Her love and affection were doled out freely toward me, like her pork chops and applesauce at suppertime. Nanny lived with us occasionally, and for a time she even lived next door to our home. I remember going to the little yellow house next door to have breakfast with my grandmother. Cornflakes might as well have been some elegant brunch prepared by a chef. Everything tasted better at Nanny’s, and I was always her special guest.
A few years later, my parents didn’t directly tell us kids that Nanny was dying after she went into the hospital and then a nursing home. When bedrooms were shuffled around at our house I was unsure about moving into my “own” bedroom at almost age 8 because I worried about taking over Nanny’s room. What about when she came back?
She did come back, but only for one special visit. The lung cancer and brain tumor were weakening her, but she could still come home for a brief stay. We welcomed her like she was a visiting head of state and complimented her on how beautiful her new wig looked.
When the end finally came, my parents gently broke the news to all of us, but it was still a shock. Mother told us Nanny went straight to heaven because she had converted to Catholicism only weeks before, having had confession and having received the Last Rites. During the funeral, Mother only crumpled in spirit slightly when the priest talked about the angels taking Nanny away, but she recovered quickly. My mother, an only child, had been determined to be the kind of daughter she knew she had to be and she had trained herself to be strong. I cried freely as we walked down the church steps at St. Emedius Church in Lynwood to go to the interment.
“Don’t let them take my Nanny away!” I wailed as our feet quietly scraped the concrete steps. Later, hugs and casseroles and stories from Nanny’s life followed the burial. The relatives and in-laws were an affectionate, comforting bunch, especially to little kids who had lost their grandmother. They had loved her very much. Her forbearing spirit was known to everyone.
But I had trouble letting go because I didn’t really know how to grieve. When my grandmother’s birthday came, I defiantly bought her a birthday card. I was just going to pretend like she was still with us. I kept the card in the envelope in a little desk drawer in my room.
I put some flowers in a hidden corner of the flowerbed so I could pretend like I was visiting Nanny at the cemetery and I didn’t have to depend on anyone to take me. I composed a little melody on the organ in our living room in Nanny’s honor. I found and treasured an old pair of her glasses in a beige-gray case.
Years went by after Nanny’s passing. Yet something still seemed to remain undone. I was not sure what.
A job brought me back to California. I bought a purple balloon, flowers, and eventually found my way to the cemetery.
I finished writing my note to God and folded it over carefully. Attaching the folded paper to the helium-filled globe, I got out of the car and walked around to open the door from the other side in order to take the balloon and the flowers to the grave. My plan was to lay the flowers down and release the balloon. I felt a quiet sense of gratitude. I thought about God’s hand in the sometimes painful turns of my life. A little child’s memories and thoughts came forth along with the adult who hadn’t forgotten that love comes to us in many different ways. It calls us, woos us and reminds us to never forget that we are loved.
As I opened the car door, the wind suddenly picked up and the balloon emerged as if on its own accord, rising to catch a quick breeze that lifted it heavenward. I watched as it took off into the air towards the clouds. Rising higher and higher until it was just a dot in the blue sky, the balloon finally disappeared from view.
When I told a friend how my planned steps with my note to God about my grandmother had changed with a little interesting twist, she immediately knew what had happened with the balloon.
She replied in a knowing voice, “It was wanted.”
As an official sponsor, along with Argenta Arts Foundation, of "Tales from the South," a radio program taped each Tuesday at Starving Artist Cafe in North Little Rock, Ark., featuring southerners telling their own true stories, AY brings you this monthly feature of highlights from "Tales from the South." The program is broadcast Thursdays at 7 p.m. on KUAR (FM89.1) in central Arkansas. You can find it streaming online at kuar.org; or listen along with 140 million European listeners on World Radio Network Sundays at 9 a.m. at wrn.org. For more information, log onto talesfromthesouth.com.
Besides telling tales, Tim Bennett writes poetry and has written features for Arkansas newspapers. He teaches Spanish to high school students in Batesville, Ark., where he lives with his wife Marla and three cats.
