An Ode to My Grandma

Today is my grandma's birthday. I think she'd be 76ish (?). My grandma was an amazing woman.  She didn't raise us, but she sure influenced me in major ways all throughout my life. I remember when we were moving from Ft. Knox, KY to Douglasville, GA, we were to spend a couple months with my grandparents so my mom and dad could get the home, jobs, other details sorted out in Georgia. I remember being so happy. This was the life! I was only four at the time, so the details are fuzzy, but I remember it with my soul, if not with my brain. 

When we moved back to Louisville, I remember playing kickball in the backyard. We would venture into the old rickety, dilapidated, wooden garage to find something for a base (why we never used the same thing is beyond me) and just out past the crab apple tree, we would play our hearts out! 

She was an easy pushover, and on a regular basis I could convince her to walk to Cox's Drug Store or Key Market Grocery (usually both, just to get out and do something). Here, we would get a canned soda and a butter finger candy bar. On the way home, we would stop at the "mini park", as we called it, and play on the monkey bars, swings and slides. She'd give all kinds of warnings as this was back in the day when all equipment was metal; and also rusted! Then on the way home, inevitably, I'd be too tired to finish the walk on my own so she'd have to carry me. I was much too old to be carried, but she'd do it anyway. We joked my legs would be dragging the ground, but she'd still carry me. 

On vacation to visit me in Florida, During tropical Storm Dennis

She taught me so much. Nothing life-essential by most standards. But everything she taught me has increased my quality of life, my understanding of life...has enriched me ways immeasurable. For instance she taught me how to sew when I was a little boy in half-day kindergarten and helped me make a purse for my mom. She taught me how to make homemade biscuits, and to play with some of the dough to make cinnamon rolls, chocolate biscuits, whatever I could imagine. She taught me how to make jams & jellies and to preserve my own tomatoes. We laugh that she never saw the point of making those small 4 oz jars, and I quote, "that's barely enough for one person's biscuit!"  Pickles were one of her favorite things to make, and we must've made bushels of them. She taught me how to cook and turn $5 worth of groceries into a feast for an army. And always to be hospitable--she kept stuff to make "pallets" under all the beds in case family came thru en route to/from Indianapolis/Tompkinsville. She taught me to sit on the porch and watch the storms. She taught me so much. 

Three years before she died, she allowed me to record some of the songs she used to always sing and to record some of our family/life history. I edited, spliced and put them in a specific order to give out as Christmas presents that year. The days and hours I spent with her at the dining room table that summer recording are some of the most precious. She told me stories I'd never heard. Swore me to secrecy over this detail or that one. Forbade me to release certain stories and songs I'd recorded. We laughed and laughed and laughed at our shenanigans and we cried over our heartbreaks, all while the record button was on for future generations. I learned so much from my grandma. Here is a link to some of the stories and songs she allowed me to record: Grandma's CD (Partial)

I pray everyone experiences someone like my grandma

And one day, she got sick. Really sick. After years of battling Cancer, her body was failing. And it was my turn to give back. She allowed me to move into her home and help take care of her. Initially we thought it was to help her rehabilitate until she could live independently. . . I quickly grasped she was never going to experience that again, in fact the only room she lived in after she came home was her bedroom. But those weeks of nurturing and loving on my grandma also taught me so much...so like her to teach me up until the day she died. Literally her last breath held a lesson for me. I learned so much from my grandma. 

In those last days, she taught me about compassion and forgiveness. Moving on and regret. Laughter and tears. Compromise and digging in. My dad had just died months before and we were all still numb from that. I was the only one who had the flexible schedule to be able to be with her 24/7 and I tried to live out every last lesson she'd taught me. We'd sit together and watch Judge Judy in her room. I'd play Josh Groban as the liquid morphine would work its magic, allowing her to slip into sweet, pain-free oblivion for a few hours. I'd simmer chicken breast with just a smidge of seasoning because she could sometimes sip a spoonful and taste it. I'd hold those little blue bags while the effects of chemo were expelled from her body. I'd change this bag and that tube, give her this shot and that infusion. I cried. A lot. But through the tears of pain, I loved. A lot.

I learned that from my grandma; so much from my grandma.