“No, sweetheart, you’re a big boy. You need to sleep in your own bed.”
The following day, Daniel died in a tragic vehicle accident. It was the greatest pain of my baka’s life. “Kristina, if I had just known. . . . If I had just somehow known that I’d never get to hold him again, I would have allowed him to sleep next to me that night, wrapped up in my arms.”
I don’t know how a person survives losing four children, but she did. She would say that her faith in God got her through, days and nights spent on her knees praying and sobbing and begging for comfort. She doubted a lot of things in life, but she never doubted God, and that faith gave her solace that someday she’d see Daniel and her three girls again.
My grandmother believed in the power of prayer. She not only started and ended each day with prayer; she prayed all day long. Whether she was cooking or gardening or expertly sewing a dress that I had sloppily designed on a piece of paper, in her mind she was constantly engaged in ongoing conversations with God. She’d also sing old hymns as she went about her day. “‘When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, / When sorrows like sea billows roll; / Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, / It is well, it is well with my soul!’” That particular hymn, she’d tell me, was written by Horatio Spafford, who had lost his young son to an illness, and only a few years later lost his four daughters in a shipwreck. He wrote the song in his greatest moments of grief, searching for peace, the same peace my grandmother so desperately wanted to feel. She would sigh and then reiterate, “Don’t be like me. Don’t spend your life worrying. Worry is the opposite of peace. My worry has never fixed a single problem. It didn’t add anything to my life, but it took so much away.”
With all that my grandmother had endured, it’s not surprising that she was a worrier. She knew what it felt like to have life surprise you in the cruelest ways, and it’s almost as if she were always preparing herself for the next strike.
As the years passed, my grandmother’s life got easier, more comfortable, and less complicated. When my family moved to the United States during the war in Croatia, my grandparents came along and moved in with us. My grandmother had so many people in her life who loved her, admired her, respected her, and some who even envied her. And yet the worry never left.
When I became an adult, she’d occasionally ask me to trim her hair. She was much happier with me doing it than going to a salon, despite the fact that I had no training. She would sit patiently, telling and retelling me stories I’d already heard dozens of times. I never minded hearing them again. There was always something new for me to hear in them. I’d finish her haircut, full of disclaimers, warning her that it was far from perfect and that I really didn’t know what I was doing. But she’d just take my hand, kiss it, and say, “Ne brini! Divno je!” Which in Croatian means, “Don’t worry! It’s wonderful!” She was wonderful. She was always wonderful to me.
Toward the end of her life, my baka had many health issues. Eventually, she couldn’t read because her eyes were in so much pain. She may have had only a fourth-grade education, but my baka had such a deep love of learning. She taught herself English, mainly by reading, and she particularly enjoyed history. I walked into her bedroom so many times to find her with her nose buried in a biography of one American president or another. But for the last few years of her life, she could no longer read or take the long walks she once enjoyed daily. When I’d call her on her birthday she’d say, “Oh, Kristina, I was really hoping not to be here for this birthday! I’m ready to go.”
The very last day I spent with her, we sang together once again. I sat beside her bed in the nursing home she’d settled into after moving back to Croatia, and we sang “Amazing Grace” in Croatian. She reminded me once more that we were so alike, and she urged me not to waste my life worrying.
As I was saying goodbye to her, tears streamed down my face. I knew full well that, unlike all of our other goodbyes, this one would be final. I hugged her and held on to her, just like I did after each visit with her as a child. I kissed her face, my tears smearing onto her cheeks, thanking her for everything—for how much she loved and believed in me. She took my hands into hers, which were beautifully wrinkled and shaky, and said, “Don’t cry. I’ll see you again.” And then she leaned in and whispered, “Where the roses never die and where there are no more goodbyes.”
And no more worries either, I thought to myself. No more worries.
The morning my mother called to tell me that my grandmother had passed, I felt such sadness, and yet such joy. Never before had I felt those two emotions so strongly at the same time. My baka was ready to go; she had been praying that God would take her. I was heartbroken that I couldn’t just pick up the phone and hear her voice once again, yet I was also overjoyed that her worries were over. My baka’s name is Mira (pronounced Mee-ra), a name derived from the Croatian word for “peace” (mir). She was finally at peace.
I couldn’t sleep the night after she died. I kept thinking about her life. I thought about the way she treated everything living, from people to her garden, with such hope. She worried about her own life, but the moment someone else was struggling, she was there to encourage them and not let them dwell on their fears.
Like her, I worry about everything. In my late teens and early twenties, I ended up with ulcers from all my worrying. Despite my hard-won certainty that worry never fixes or solves anything, both my grandmother and I kept worry around, kind of like an old friend you know is destructive but who has been your friend since childhood, so it’s hard to part ways. Because what’s familiar, even if it’s unhealthy, becomes comfortable.
Having children only amplified my worrying. I don’t think there’s been a day in my life as a mother that I haven’t worried. I worry about big stuff and small stuff and everything in between. There’s a saying in Croatian, “Ne daj Bože djetetu što mama misli,” which basically means “God, don’t let a mother’s thoughts actually happen to the child.” Because our thoughts suck. They just suck! Mom brains anticipate the worst. When our teenager is half an hour late, we think, What if he’s stuck somewhere and can’t get help? What if he got into a horrible accident? What if . . . What if . . . What if . . . ?
Those what-ifs have fully moved in and made themselves very much at home in my mind. One day, as I was worrying to my friend Amy, giving my fears way more attention than they deserved, Amy interrupted me midsentence and asked, “But what if the opposite of that ends up being true? Of all the things you’ve ever worried about, how many of them actually ended in a catastrophic tragedy? Didn’t it turn out that with most of those worries, the opposite actually happened? Why are you creating a problem that doesn’t even exist yet? And when the best possible outcome happens, you won’t be ready at all to dig in and start living your best life. You’ll only be prepared for the bad stuff to drop into your lap!”