My Grandma's Bible

My grandma's bible is on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. It's been moved around quite a bit. It was on the top shelf for a while, but then movies and comic books took its place. It migrated down as textbooks and classic literature piled up like failed relationships, dusty relics of a college education.

In 1956 my grandma's house burnt down. The bible survived. The pages are stained with smoke, and the leather is brittle in places, but the bible survived. She carried it with her every week to church. She read it every night before bed. Eventually her hips went, and she couldn't go to church. Then her eyes went, and she couldn't read small print. She kept the bible anyway.

In 2007 I went away to college. I packaged up all my childhood memories into two suitcases and I went to her house to say goodbye. On my way out the door, she told me to wait a minute. She went into her room which was rebuilt 50 years before and came out with the bible.

"I can't use it anymore." She said, "you'll be able to put it to better use than I can." I think in that moment she put it to better use than I ever will.

She died four months later. We laid her to sleep next to her husband.

Sometimes that bible is a memory of her. It still smells like her house. It brings back memories of Taco Soup and CMT, of decades old jello and flower print nightgowns. Sometimes it is a symbol of a faith far older and more significant than any human life, but made up of so many human moments. Sometimes, I see it as a holy relic. Perhaps it will prove to be miraculous. I have a sneaky suspicion that it would not burn if I held it to a flame.

My grandma's bible is on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. Someday, I may crack the spine and read the 23rd Psalm in the Old King James. Or, I may not. That's not what relics are for, anyway. They are memory objectified and eternity encapsulated. It is evidence that some things survive in the fire.