July is the month we say goodbye to writers who are retiring or moving on to new adventures, and this is Isaac’s last post. He has been writing with us since August 2023.

On September 10, 2001, my grandma’s riding lawnmower rolled down the bank of a ditch, pinning her to a creekbed. Thankfully, the water was low that year. Thankfully, someone noticed her as he was driving and was surprised to see her disappear from his rearview mirror. Thankfully, only the tip of her right thumb was cut off by one of the mower’s blades. She never played the piano the same. 

Because she survived, she went on to enjoy the rest of her life, giving me many memories of her: 

She took two eggs and one piece of toast for breakfast. She walked out to the mail box and smiled whenever she received a hand-written letter. Every day she would read the newspaper from cover to cover—including the ads—with lemon and ginger tea. Sometimes she would sneak an ice cream bar from the freezer. She would sit on her couch with her arms resting on top of each other, contentedly watching Calvin’s January Series. She cherished being physically warm— someone once asked her what her favorite thing was and she laughed and said, “my pillow.” I recall her teaching me about the black-capped chickadee’s “chicka dee dee dee” call when I was younger. She took supporting Ottawa County Parks very seriously. While sitting on a bench at Holland’s Window on the Waterfront, she told me that “the more kids you have the more fun you have.” She called me once and left a voicemail to tell me about the Holland Area Arts Council art exhibit. She ended every voicemail with “thank you, bye now.” She used to read my posts here on the post calvin and she died on May 13 of this year. 

Because of her death, the family decided to sell her cottage on Lake Michigan that she co-owned. “Grandma’s cottage,” as we called it, was probably my favorite place on earth. Having access to good food, good people, and Lake Michigan helped me breathe deeply and smile. In some ways, leaving the cottage feels like coming to terms with Grandma’s death. At the same time, losing the cottage has helped me appreciate the immense privilege of being born into a family that owned access to Lake Michigan. 

I’ve always felt good about C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’s views on death (to this day, listening to “The Call” by Regina Spektor and “Into the West” by Annie Lennox makes me want to cry). I could never summarize how they felt about death, but I’m choosing these quotes to help me out. Lewis’s quote is for the people left behind and Tolkien’s quote is for people experiencing death. 

In his book on grieving his beloved wife, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis writes:

Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

This quote from The Fellowship of the Ring invites the reader to enter into Frodo’s dream while he’s staying at Tom Bombadil and Goldberry’s home, which was known as “Underhill”:

Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was all rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise. 

Frodo’s dream is echoed and fulfilled by Tolkien when Frodo sails from the Grey Havens to the Blessed Realm at the end of his journey. Tolkien even says in one of his letters that “the Elves call ‘death’ the Gift of God (to Men).”

My grandma’s name was Mary Jane Byker. Mary Jane never liked all this nerdy fantasy stuff, so who knows what she would have thought of my last post here on the post calvin. But I’m choosing to believe heaven is something like Tolkien described it, which makes death not as bad as it feels. In a way, any change is a kind of death. I’m mourning a lot these days, but hopefully some of these changes will leave room for something new and beautiful. 

Original artwork by Courtney Ridout 

Isaac DeBoer

Isaac graduated Calvin in 2019 studying English, secondary education. After finishing teaching English, he’s enjoyed working in higher education at Hope College while taking steps to be a certified hospital chaplain. Isaac loves movies and lighthouses more than most things.