Farewell, Grandma…

Dad called this morning to let me know that Grandma passed away last night. She hadn’t been doing well the past couple of weeks and Dad had flown down to Atlanta to help take care of her. I phoned her hospital room early in the evening yesterday and we talked for a few minutes. She was having trouble breathing but had her wits about her and was really happy to talk. As our conversation was ending I told her to get some rest and she said between labored breaths, “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do tonight…rest.”

Thinking about her last night and today brought back a flood of memories from my childhood. I remember the excited feeling in my stomach when my parents would wake me up early the morning of a road trip to Grandma’s. It felt like Christmas. We’d occupy ourselves in the car by seeing how many license plate states we could spot or counting the number of Waffle House signs (okay, maybe I was the only one who played this particular private game). When we’d arrive there would be food waiting for us, the sort of treats we didn’t often get back home: black-eyed peas, white rice, pork, and sweet tea. But my favorite meal was breakfast. In addition to bacon and eggs, we’d enjoy that rarest of all breakfast side-dishes: grits with real butter, which as far I knew only existed in Grandma’s Kitchen. If the food was too hot Great Aunt Maybelle would suggest I start eating from the edges and work my way inward, and I would ponder the thermodynamics of this.

Grandma had cable television and we could watch Mr. Wizard, Nickelodeon, cartoons, and parades broadcast live from New York. There were woods in the back yard and a big rock to climb. She would teach me the names of the trees and point out the birds that would eat at her feeder by the big window. In the evening we might all work together at the kitchen table on a puzzle that seemed impossible to solve with its several thousand tiny cardboard pieces. Like the grits, we’d start from the edges and work our way inward.

Tags: Personal