i spy - vol. 6: toto. (or, yet another reason i believe in god.)

Some people might find this post morbid, and maybe it inherently is, but that's not the crux of it. so please bear with me after looking at the following photos.

gertrude (gerry) brin, 1946 (32 years old)

gerry brin, 2007 (deceased 2002; the ashes are kept in a vase in my grandfather's living room)

how can one possibly wrap one's mind around the fact that these two shots are of, essentially, the same physical specimen? (dont get technical on me about the differences jaime - you know what i mean.) in betweeen these two photos, my grandmother charmed countless men at cocktail parties, gave birth to and raised my dad, created window displays at saks fifth avenue, coordinated fashion shows at lord & taylor (where she was once joan rivers's boss, i might add), and was a loving, devoted wife to my grandfather for over 50 years.

when i was little, and baseball cards were all the rage, toto would run to all corners of the city looking for rarities that i wanted. she taught me how to play tennis - first against against a wall in st. vartan park, then with my grandfather, in central park (where shed bring the best ham and swiss sandwiches for us to eat afterwards). the woman had a true one-handed backhand, and when i say one-handed backhanded, i mean she didnt grab the racket with her left hand on her upswing - as most people do - at all.

when i stayed over at my grandparents' place, she always insisted on cleaning my feet; shed drag me to the tub, where shed scrub my toes with a little brush that tickled like hell. then shed tuck me into bed, and tell me stories about ice skating on a frozen lake champlain as a girl.

she was always the most elegant woman wherever she went. and not because she dressed fancily; she just dressed well. she was most fond of wearing beige, and my dad actually nicknamed her 'beige.'

she had my grandfather dye her hair blonde until the end. and even past 80, she didnt look at all odd with blonde hair. that's the kind of simple elegance she possessed.

she put a single red dot of nail polish on most of her smaller personal belongings - her keys, her change purse, her tennis racket case - to identify them as hers. when i first saw her ashes, five years ago, i joked that if we poured them out, wed find a little red dot in the pile.

so my question is - how is it possible that this wonderful woman could live this life, so full of love and style and the other intangibles that make life, and now sit inanimate in a vase on the floor?

what is it that imbued the molecules that are now ashes with the flesh and spirit that was toto?

i dont think we can ever know. at once, it seems like the only question we should be asking, and yet we must immediately resign ourselves to the fact that we'll never have an answer.

and that's ok. we should just be grateful that it happens.

some unknowable magic happens. and i call that magic god. i dont know if god is a male, or has a white beard (id guess not). i dont know - pardon the expression - what the hell god is. but god flowed through toto for 89 years, and has been flowing through me for 28, and hopefully will continue to flow through moi for a good deal longer.

that's my god. and im sticking to it.

ps - i like how toto and i have the same eyebrow move goin on in these two photos; we were truly kindred:

thanks to steak& for photoshopping this for me