Time nor space nor age nor maturity can provide complete relief from internal losses we have suffered during this human journey. Whether a sudden sniff of faint remembered odor, a sudden shift in the coolness of air, or a certain twang of a familiar country song note hit just right, we are transported back in time swift as warp drive. 12 years in and today I still find myself suddenly longing for my beloved Granny!
Just shy of 5 feet tall, this tiny little country powerhouse survived the worst that life in the mid-20th century could throw at her, starting with the death of her mother at a young age, the Great Depression, the birth of 5 children during the 1940s, a massive heart attack, and the eventual death-by-cancer of her husband, whom she went on to live 22 years without. She also raise numerous goats, chickens and crazy tall ears of corn – all of which provided me with a wealth of fond childhood memories.
At the age of 80 you could still find her out front chopping wood for the iron cast stove in her 1940s cozy cinderblock 5 room home she had lived in since her youngest child (my father) entered school, hoe’ing one of her many garden plots, and calling on “them dadburn chickens” to come in their pen at night.
She could play a thoroughly wicked game of poker and taught all of us yougins the fine art of Go Fish, Old Maid and Gin Rummy, holding well worn cards with beaded, arthritic hands, capped in chipped ruby red nail polish…all while a lit Salem dangled from her leathered smiling lips. But don’t sip from her red solo cup mistaking it for her always-on-tap sweet tea or you may end up with a mouthful of Granny’s hard whiskey! If that DID happen though, be prepared for haughty laughter over the sound of the slamming forest green wood screen door in your rushed attempt to spit it out in the front yard! Ehem.. not that I would know personally, of course. 😉 Then there were the spooky fall nights, filled with crackling stove fire, 80s country music playing softly from the old grey tape deck, the eerie creak of the back porch swing, and whispered tales of UNK, the resident headless ghost who wandered Granny’s yard peeping through windows in his tireless quest for a new head (preferably from a brown haired child with a red shirt and white shorts…or whatever look you happened to be sporting that particular evening).
And now here I sit, well over a decade since I last heard her voice. I have so many questions I would love to ask her that never occurred to teenage-me! Questions about birth, raising multiple children, overcoming modern materialistic desire, what her thought about war were and how she survived without air condition. And although her voice timbre is almost faded from memory, and I’ll never get the answers to specific questions, her age-old life lessons still ring fervently in my ears.
And I hope she is proud of me.

Death Grandmother Loss Separation