Pennies

This story appears in Re-Visions 2013, the twentieth anniversary of the Tompkins-Cortland C.C. Literary Magazine. And go figure-- I found a penny on my desk at work this morning...

Pennies
BY Mia Starmer Reisweber

I had never heard of this before, this idea of pennies from Heaven. But what did I know? I was only fifteen, wrapped tightly around my youngest cousin, when my dad leaned into my ear and whispered that Grandpa passed. The softly spoken truth gutted me. Hiccups of tears soaked Megan’s hair as I rocked her and promised her that Grandpa was happy and free of pain. I promised her that she had a new angel that day; but I didn't really believe in angels.  Grandpa was gone. And that was that.

Weeks after the calling hours and funeral, I watched my mother bandage her pain with books. Books about grief and coping and the dead. Books with theories on the afterlife, versions of Heaven. My mother spoke of Sylvia Browne as if they studied at college together, as if she frequented our home for Sunday dinner, which, I suppose, she did, in spirit.

I had never heard of this before, this idea of pennies from Heaven, until Sylvia Browne became my mother's therapist. "He left me a penny, today. You'll get one too. You just wait," Mom would say, confidently hopeful as she pressed her bookmark into the seam of a Browne paperback.

Affected, hormonal, I surely must have rolled my eyes. I've always seen pennies. Surely there were pennies everywhere, because our blue-collared town meant lots of old, tattered jeans. Old, tattered jeans meant holes. Holes drop pennies. 

Then, I found my first penny.

Mom showcased a photograph of Grandpa in our living room. Rosy, round cheeks, healthy and plump, smiling and proud. Those first few months, if I glanced at him, the sting of his absence was worse than someone splashing lemon juice on fresh stitches. I adverted. I avoided. But one day, while sitting on the couch, I glanced up and stared directly at the photograph. I poured the lemon juice myself.

The photo sat on a tall hutch. I slid off the couch and stood, resting my face on the wooden space in front of the photograph. I confronted the ache of loss. I slipped into an abyss of thinking about death. How and why and where? I stared for too long, and I didn't recognize him anymore. In the three years leading up to his death, the cancer sucked away his weight; it collapsed his cheeks, painted him pale and then wrapped itself around his voice box until it swallowed him that December. The pressure of tears swelled, so I gathered my thoughts and tucked him safely into a box in my mind. I quickly sought distraction.

But, before I plopped back on the couch, a dull shimmer flickered at my right peripheral. A penny perched on the edge of the cushion. Sure, I could have missed it before, but the penny linked itself to my chest, a feeling that grew, overwhelmingly. That was a penny from Grandpa. A little gesture. A small hello. A reminder that maybe we don't always know everything, and that's ok.

Grandpa leaves me pennies when I need them. Before I decided on a college, for example, I found a penny on the seat of my car. It landed at the pivotal moment when forty-thousand dollars to be a Syracuse Orange was more valuable and prestigious than my parents’ sanity or retirement funds. The penny reminded me that I am responsible for finding my own challenges, and I could very well find them at Tompkins-Cortland while living at home for a semester. With that penny, I swelled with peace at my decision.   Another time, a week before my wedding, while composing lists of wedding day reminders: "Something old and something new, yes, I've got both of those. Something borrowed. Got it! Something blue. That comes in tomorrow...."

I found a penny lying on the ground right under my notebook. That one I saved for my shoe. A meaningful one. Not for luck. But carried so that the spirit of my grandfather on my wedding day was pressed against my sole. Not every penny is for me. I still see pennies all over the place. Sometimes on my run, occasionally at the grocery store, thousands in the pools at the mall. But Grandpa knows my skepticism. He strategically places my pennies so I know, without a doubt, paired with love, that they are from him.