My Grandma

My Grandma

Posted on December 14, 2013 by shy1sharla

My grandma died a while back. She was in her 70s or 80s, she didn’t know for sure her real age. She came from an old country family that worked in fields picking cotton for pay and they had to have every able body to do the work. So grandma didn’t go to school after the third grade. She was very shy and timid of strangers or kin folks whom she didn’t know too well. She was scared and intimidated of people

She didn’t know how to read or write and her sister Pearl was the one who wrote to the personals in the paper to find grandma a boyfriend and then Pearl wrote to a man they found for grandma to. The man who finally answered the ad turned out to be my grandpa. Grandpa had to go to grandmas home and stay with her family as a guest so that she, as an adult of twenty two, could get to know him enough to agree to marry him. I loved hearing grandma tell me about when she was younger.

We were always over to grandmas cause mom didn’t seem to be able to do anything without grandma. I loved going to grandmas cause that was the place where my brothers and sister and I always seemed to have more freedom to play and just act like children.

Grandma was the one, besides my dad, who had always showed me love. She gave me hugs and let me sit in her lap and even let me get in her bed between her and grandpa when I woke up scared. She would hold me when I clung to her if there was a thunderstorm outside. Grandma wouldn’t give me words to make me feel better but her presence was always a comfort to me.

I loved grandmas house cause we all four of us children could run around and play and she didn’t hit us and make us sit down with fear of spankings if we didn’t behave. We could go outside and wonder the neighborhood without fear of getting lost cause grandma lived in a small town of a city where it was easy to remember where grandma lived and to stay close yet while we took chances to get further away from what we knew.

I remember being put in the corner at grandmas house. I would peel the paint that was already loose and wouldn’t get into trouble for it by any grownups. Grandmas was always my home away from home. If I ran away from my mom and got tired of roaming around I would always go to grandmas and find shelter.

Even when I grew up and got married and moved far away grandmas was always the place I missed and needed to get back to for visits. I knew all of my other brothers and sisters would be there for visits to and we would all be able to see each other. These days that doesn’t happen anymore with grandma gone. Even my dad was always at grandmas. He always loved joking around and making my mom mad. He died back in 2005.

Dad was the man grandma signed papers for mom to marry when she was sixteen years old and to wild for my timid grandma to tame. Grandma was always telling mom and us the right way to live whether or not we listened. She jut kept right on trying to save our souls. We always rode on the church bus to go to church with our grandparents. Neither of them could drive and grandma always had to depend on mom to take her to pay the bills, or get money orders.

I miss grandma around this Christmas holiday. I miss going to see her and calling her to make sure everything was ok or just to hear any gossip she liked to tell me. I feel an empty space that she always filled. I miss grandma more than anything.

She always had a hump on the back of her neck and when she got really old it began making her chest cave in dangerously. I wish I had known she was going to die, but the doctor didn't know either and had her ready to get out of the hospital the next day. So I was shocked when the nurse called me and told me she had died in the night.

No one will ever take the place of my grandma.