Insight and Inspiration

Ann's List

Reprinted from Daily Guideposts September 8, 2007

By Jenette Nelson

Stanley, North Dakota

September on the prairie, and the leaves were drying up and turning. Summer vacation was almost over, and I had lesson plans to make. I love teaching in our small town of Stanley, North Dakota, population 1,237. And I especially love teaching art. But I wished school could start some other time. September is the anniversary of my daughter Ann’s death. And that September, four years after she’d died, I found myself wondering just when my grief would finally ease. In the first months after my husband, Gary, and I lost Ann, I awoke three times a night, at 1:00 A.M., 3:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M., each time with tears on my face. Not crying, just tears on my face. Then a numbness settled over me—and stayed. Usually, when I go to the dentist, I ask for novocaine because I have sensitive teeth. After Ann died, I didn’t need it. I felt nothing. But there was work to be done. I walked upstairs to my office. So many things reminded me of Ann—and yet, four years on, she felt farther from me than ever. Even getting out of bed, which some days I found hard to work myself up to, reminded me of those mornings she’d burst into our room at first light to beg for a game of “gold swish”—her name for Go Fish—when she was four years old. She would play that game as if conducting a high-stakes financial transaction—which, amazingly, is what she grew up to do. Like Gary, who manages a bank, Ann gravitated to numbers, and she became a bond broker in New York City. I can still see her sitting on that bed, frowning at my winning hand and beating me the next game.

I walked into the office and my heart sank. My computer, I remembered, didn’t work—my grandkids had been at it. I looked around. I couldn’t put those lesson plans off forever. Well, I thought, I suppose I could use Ann’s computer.

Not long after Ann died, her friends boxed up her things and sent them to us—clothes, papers and a black laptop computer. I looked through the papers and hung some of the clothes in my closet for a time. Some days, I would bury my face in them. Once, I even found a strand of Ann’s long, light-brown hair on a jacket. I lifted it off and wound it around my finger, then tucked it into my jewelry box. But the computer I stuck in the basement, then on a shelf in the closet. For one thing, computers and I don’t get along—they never seem to do what I think they’ll do. And besides, what’s actually in a computer? They’re machines, and I prefer people. There’s not much life in a machine.

Gary, however, was at work, and I had no idea how to get my own computer running again. So I went into the closet and pulled down the laptop. Most of Ann’s clothes were no longer hanging there. We had carefully stored them in the basement. The rest of her things were in the study, in a wood chest built by a friend. Maybe that’s when I began to feel Ann slipping away. I had stopped praying to understand why we lost Ann a long time ago. But lately I had been praying, in a sort of incoherent way, not to lose her again to the fading of memory. I had plenty of pictures of Ann—childhood pictures, school pictures, pictures from the trips she loved to take to far-off places like China and Peru. There were even photos from her office, all the way up on the one-hundred-and-fourth floor of the World Trade Center, where we visited her and looked down on the big city below, laid out in rows like a wheat field. But four years is a long time. Don’t let her go, God, I prayed.

I set the computer on my desk and flipped open the lid. The slate-colored screen was blank. I hesitated. Then I pressed the button with my finger. The screen lit up and the computer stirred to life. It took a moment to get itself in order, but soon I was looking at rows of glowing icons, all arranged as Ann had arranged them. This is what Ann would have seen when she turned it on, I thought. There was a folder marked “My Pictures.” Another called “Games.” And another: “Top 100.” I clicked on the photos and, to my amazement, there was her shining face—on a computer! I remembered how, the last time she’d visited, she’d opened my purse and slipped in a few photos of her and her boyfriend, Eric, traveling in Montana. It was right before Labor Day, 2001, and she’d said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be home again on Columbus Day.” She’d said that three times—she must have seen something in my face: sadness, maybe, or worry. A few days later, Gary and I were in our bedroom watching the north tower, where Ann worked, fall.

Gary slid from the edge of the bed onto his knees and said, “She’s gone."

As I looked at all of those photos, though, my courage rose. What else of Ann is in here? I wondered. I clicked on “Games.” Up came three card games: solitaire, hearts and free cell. And there she was, padding down the stairs in her nightgown at 6:00 A.M., climbing onto our bed and announcing, “Time to play gold swish!” I thought of afternoons at her uncle’s. He had taught her how to play whist, and I played with her sometimes just to watch her strategizing mind. This was a girl who, when she decided to improve her vocabulary, made flash cards and took them on trips, to bed, wherever she could find a spare moment. She savored each new word. One day, she appeared at my side and exclaimed, “Listen to this word I just learned: affable. Isn’t that a wonderful word?"

I opened one of the games and began to play. Grief had befuddled my mind about some things, and I realized I had forgotten solitaire. Teach me, Ann, I thought. And I heard her voice. “One step at a time, Mom. You can do it. Just break it down.” And I did. The cards went here, there. I felt my mind sliding into a groove. I’m thinking like Ann, I said to myself.

I let that thought carry me, and over the next months I found myself turning on Ann’s computer every day. If it had been stressful at school, or I felt weighed down by sadness, I would deal a hand of solitaire and, suddenly, Ann’s capable, vibrant voice was in my mind. Even that hint of connection was an overwhelming relief, and I poked around on the computer for more. To my disappointment, I didn’t find much. Ann hadn’t owned the computer very long before she had died, and after a while, I wondered if the games were going to be all that there was.

Then in March of this year I took a look at the “Top 100.” I had always assumed it meant music, something that Ann and I seldom talked about. But I was running out of things to explore. So I clicked it. And there, as if she had been waiting for me all those years, was Ann herself—not music, not photos, not games, but Ann, her life, arranged in a numbered list of goals, just as she would do. I gasped. I’m still here, Mom, I heard her say. I ran my fingers over the words, feeling the screen’s smoothness. It was like sitting down for one of our long, deep talks. I scooted my chair closer and began scrolling through the list. “Be a good friend.” A shiver of recognition ran through me. That was certainly Ann, gathering friends wherever she went. I remembered her on visits home, padding downstairs, pouring a cup of coffee for herself and getting on the phone to catch up with everyone she knew.

"Keep in touch with people I love and that love me.” I felt a thawing sensation. Keep in touch with people I love.

"Make a quilt.” I remembered the weeks here at home before she’d left for her first job in Chicago. We’d painted some old furniture for her to take and began sewing a tablecloth. We didn’t finish the tablecloth in time, but Ann told me not to worry. “We’ll finish it, Mom,” she said. “And I want to make a quilt too."

"Buy a home in North Dakota.” The last time she was home, Ann took me to a plot of land outside town above some bluffs over the Missouri River. “I’m thinking of buying this, Mom, and living here someday,” she said. “I’m coming home."

The list went on. “Get a graduate degree.… Be a person to be proud of.… Read every day.… Learn to cook.… Learn about art.… Spend more time with my family.… Remember birthdays!!!!…. Appreciate money, but don’t worship it.… Be a good listener.… Kayak."

The list of numbers rose to 37. But number 37 was blank. And then there were no more entries.

It was nearly evening and Gary would be home from work soon. The light in the office was golden, and the computer glowed. I printed out the list to show to Gary. The printer made its noises as it spit out paper, then fell silent.

I sat in that silence for a while, marveling at this answer to prayer. Ann was no longer on this earth, but she hadn’t faded away. She never would. This is how you live, her list seemed to say. Moving forward. This is what would take me out of my grief.

I put my hand on the computer. Ann would be with me in the way I lived my life from now on. She was home. With God and with us.

Church of Our Redeemer              serving the Central Savannah River Area in South Carolina and Georgia