Goodbye, sweet Granny!

After working really hard for the last several weeks, I was really looking forward to seven nights off of work and a fun Memorial Day weekend.  Well I got eight nights off, and this vacation turned out much different than I expected.

 My Granny Chambers has been in a local nursing home for 2 ½ years.  She had Alzheimer’s dementia and congestive heart failure.  Earlier this year, she had a series of falls (likely due to strokes) and the decision was made to put her on hospice.  I went to see her on Mother’s Day, and I remember telling Matt that I thought she would not live much longer.   I worked Tuesday night and Wednesday night, so I slept all day Thursday.  My Mom called around 5:30 on Thursday to tell me that the hospice nurse had been by and told them that Granny would probably not make it through the weekend.  I considered calling in to work and going to sit with her, but I talked to Matt and we decided that I should go on to work and we would go as a family as soon as I got home the next morning.  Just as I was walking out the door for work, Matt met me on the stairs to tell me that Granny had just died.  I called in to work, and Matt and I left the kids at home and went to be with my dad at the nursing home.  We stayed until the funeral home director came to pick her body up.  The next few days were filled with family.  That is supposed to be a good thing, but my dad’s family is hard for me to take.  They talk incessantly and completely unfiltered.  The only thing worse than hearing about a person’s health issues in intricate detail is to hear about their animals’ health issues in intricate detail.  At least I have a home to escape to.  My poor parents were hosting, so they had nowhere to hide!  The funeral was on Sunday, and by Sunday night my dad was as exhausted as I’ve ever seen him.

The next five paragraphs are negative and trashy, and if you don’t want to read it, skip right along.   :-)

I have ten cousins on my mother’s side of the family, and they are all delightful.  I have only one cousin on my father’s side, and he is one of the most disgusting, vile human beings I have ever encountered.  I don’t talk about it often because it is such a source of shame to my dad, but my cousin is just horrible.  I am surprised he is not in prison for some of the awful things he has done.  As my grandmother’s dementia progressed and she became unable to handle her financial affairs, my cousin became her unofficial power of attorney.  He set up an online account with her bank and paid her bills.  What we did not know at that time was that he was also funding his frequent visits to strip clubs and hookers, trips to Las Vegas, and all the latest tech gadgets with my grandmother’s money.  He blew through her entire checking and savings account within months, and then he got the key to her safe deposit box and began cashing out her CD’s.  The president of the bank is an old friend of my dad’s, and he called my dad to alert him to what was going on, but by that time, it was too late.  Almost everything she had was gone.  When he was caught and his gravy train had dried up, my cousin packed up and moved to Tennessee.  

 I just don’t understand how someone could treat his own grandmother that way.  My grandfather worked hard his whole life, and he hardly ever spent anything on himself.  His only goal was for my grandmother to have enough money to live comfortably during her last years.  

During the last 2 ½ years, my parents have visited Granny 3-4 times a week without fail.  They made sure she had everything she needed.  My mom really stepped up and became a model daughter-in-law.  She really came to love my Granny deeply.  My dad’s sister lives and works close by, but she only visited my grandmother a handful of times.  Once my cousin no longer had a need for her, he hardly ever came to visit. I really think my mother is taking my grandmother’s death harder than anyone else, even my dad. 

My grandmother was an avid collector of porcelain dolls.  Granny stated several times that she wanted me to have all her dolls and her sewing machine.  I would like to have her sewing machine.  It is high quality and in a cabinet.  When I was young, my grandmother sewed clothes for me all the time.  Every time I saw her, she had made something new for me.  When my mother started working, my Granny sewed her several suits.  Her clothing looked professional.  All of her finishing was immaculate.  One time when I was in a beauty pageant, Granny sewed my dress, and I felt like a princess.  Granny really wanted to teach me to sew and tried several times, but I didn’t want to learn.  I wish I would have.  I want to have her sewing machine, and hopefully one day, I will honor her by learning to sew.

But the dolls….  First of all, I will say that my Granny cherished her dolls, and I feel honored that she loved me enough to want to give me the things she loved most.  But sadly, I don’t share her love of dolls.  Granny was a doll collector.  My Pop had his model cars.  My aunt, uncle, and cousin collect anything and everything.  Porcelain dolls, collector’s edition Barbies, figurines of all brands (Precious Memories, Snowbabies, Dicken’s Village, etc), Furby’s, Hallmark ornaments, Beanie babies, purses, Brighton jewelry, Vera Bradley everything, printed plates, etc.  And that is just my aunt.  I don’t know what all my uncle and cousin have.  If you know me at all, you know that I am not materialistic AT ALL.  My house might not reflect it well, but I am a minimalist at heart.    The thought of taking on more “stuff” almost gives me a panic attack.  I feel suffocated.  I don’t want the dolls.  I spoke with my parents about it.  They offered to store anything that my girls express interest in and gave their blessing for me to sell the rest.  I plan to put the money in an account for the kids’ college tuition.  The trouble is that my cousin has already been to Granny’s house taking loads of stuff, and I’m sure he plans to sell it to fund his debauchery.  If he wanted anything to keep for himself or if my aunt wanted anything to keep for herself, I’d be more than happy to let them have it.  I just don’t think it’s right for my cousin to cart off things Granny specifically said she wanted me to have and sell them.  I’m sure my godly grandparents would rather have the proceeds from their stuff pay college tuition for their great-grandchildren than pay for prostitutes.    But the one thing I can’t do is get ugly about it.  I’ll vent about it here, but I can’t do my Granny the dishonor of grabbing for her stuff immediately when she dies.  I have to believe that it will all get sorted out in the by and by, and my cousin will have to account for all his wrongdoing, the least of which is stealing from his family.

I feel the need to end this horrible, negative post on a positive note.  I will talk about my Granny.  My beautiful Granny was born in 1927.  She had a younger brother, and her mother died in childbirth with her third child when my Granny was 5 years old.  An aunt and uncle tried to adopt her and her brother, but her father was adamantly against it.  He wanted to raise them on his own, which was almost unheard of at that time.  A few years later, he remarried.  My grandmother told me once that she was grateful for all her stepmother did for her, but she believed that God knew what he was doing when he never gave her any children of her own.   Apparently she was a harsh woman.  When my Granny was 15 or 16, her cousin and aunt wrote a letter to a nice, handsome young man named Johnny, and they signed my Granny's name to it.  He wrote back.  They began corresponding, and they soon fell in love.  They ran off to Cleborne County, Alabama to get married when she was 16 years old.  Three years later they had a daughter, and eight years after that, my daddy was born.  They lived happily together for 64 years.

When I was little, my brother and I referred to my mother’s parents as our “fun grandparents”, and we thought just the opposite of Granny and Pop.  The passage of time has certainly changed my opinion of them.  I now cherish the time I spent with them and the love they bestowed on me.  As we were growing up, my brother and I spent every other weekend at their house in Rockmart.  They usually took us to Rome or Cartersville to K-Mart and out to eat, and they always took us to Sunday school and church at the Church of God.  I remember my Granny was either sewing or watching sewing shows on TV all the time.  I considered my Granny to be a wonderful cook because she always made us pancakes before church.  My dad told me much later that pancakes were the only thing she knew how to cook!  Granny made sure I had on a pretty dress every week that my hair did not have a single tangle.  She must not have been tender-headed, because she certainly had no pity for my tender scalp.  “You wake up looking like a rat build a nest in your hair overnight”.  I heard that every week.  I was delighted to see two of my old Sunday school teachers at Granny’s funeral and finally had the opportunity to tell them that I remember them well even after 35 years, and I remember the songs we sang and the lessons they taught me.   

I know that Granny and Pop loved us, and they loved having us stay with them.  They had a huge washtub full of Legos.  They had a giant metal set of monkey bars in the back yard for us.  They had grape vines, pecan trees, apple trees, and my Pop was an avid gardener.  Granny had a green thumb, too.  She always had beautiful flowers planted, especially hydrangeas.  There was a big Magnolia tree in the side yard.  Depending on the time of year, the blooms could be grenades or a cigarette and matches.  They also had Mimosas, and we called them “money trees” and spent long stretches of time removing the leaves from the ferns seeing who could get richer.  There was a family next door with three children.  My brother and I played with the two younger boys quite often, and I idolized their older sister.  She was a high school majorette, and she pretty much made my year when she invited me over and taught me how to twirl a baton.

  I remember Granny and Pop sitting out on the porch in the porch swing for hours on end.  They only came in to use the bathroom and get water.  Neighbors would come by and chat for a while.  Sometimes family members or church friends would come by to visit.  Granny and Pop had two refrigerators and two freezers.  The refrigerator in the back room was always full of Debbie pies and sodas.  They had two cookie jars.  One was filled with Oreo's and the other had Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies.  When we ate too much, Granny warned us that if we kept eating like that, we would get fat when we got older, but she never told us no.  Probably what I remember most about staying at Granny and Pop’s house was watching trains go by.  They lived up the street from a railroad track, and when Ben and I would hear the whistle blow, we would run to the end of the street and watch it go by.  There was always an engineer in the caboose who waved at us.  Granny was buried in a cemetery very close to her home, and during the graveside service, a train went by.  To some, it might have seemed like an unwanted distraction, but I thought it was perfectly timed.  

I wonder if it is possible that my own children will have such wonderful memories of their grandparents when they are grown.  I hope so.  Looking back, my childhood seemed idyllic, but it wasn’t just my awesome family that I remember.  It was a wonderful world back then.  People were kind, and the world seemed so safe.  Mostly safe.  I do remember watching a special on TV at Granny and Pop’s about Wayne Williams and the Atlanta child murders.  Another thing I remember watching was a movie about a man who killed his wife and children.  It haunted me for years.  It was an ABC Sunday night movie.  My grandparents were sitting out on the porch, and I’d flip the channel real quick if they came in.  

Granny and Pop also took us on trips.  Granny’s brother lived in Columbus, GA, and we would visit them fairly often.  They took us to the pool, to waterslides, to the mall, and out to eat.  An ice cream truck came through my aunt and uncle’s neighborhood.  That was awesome.  Granny and Pop were interested in genealogy.  In the days before Ancestry.com, you often has to go to cemeteries to look at headstones to get the information you needed.  If records had been lost in a fire, that might be the only way.  We went all over northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama exploring cemeteries.  Pop had a microfiche reader, and he got lots of records and newspaper articles on microfiche.  There are dozens of photo albums and notebooks at their house full of their research.  Granny and Pop also took us to Gatlinburg, Tennessee once.  We went to Dollywood and rode go-karts.  

One last memory.  One time when my Pop was in the hospital near the end of his life, somebody needed to stay with Granny.  I told Bonnie that we were going to have a girls’ night with Granny.  We did mani-pedis, ate lots of yummy snacks, watched Shirley Temple movies, and listened to stories from Granny’s childhood.  I learned so much that night.  That is definitely a favorite memory!

It is sad and I will miss her, but Granny really suffered during her final weeks, and I am glad it is over.  She is now praising God and full of joy.  She is reunited with her mother, who she spent 83 of her 88 years longing to see again, and she is with my Pop, her father and brother, and my brother, Ben.  It is sad for us, but it is a beautiful time for her. 

 Alright, that’s enough.  One day I will go back and add some more photos to this post.  I just have to find them.  

Johnnie & Helen - early 1940's

Granny, Ben, me, and "Mama Bell" (Granny's step-mother) - 1980

Granny & me - February 2012

Granny with my kids - February 2012

dollies