My Mema

Tonight after supper, we were sitting around listening to music as a family.   Wrex started playing the kids some of his favorite songs growing up and before long, “Song of the South” by Alabama came up on the list.  Trust me, it is one of his favorites; I can hear it blaring through the halls of the boys’ dorm in Clarendon now…

That song got me thinking about Mema, my dad’s mom.  She picked a lot of cotton in her day…for sure one of the toughest (yet sweetest) ladies I’ve ever met.  She wasn’t afraid of any kind of work.  I would stand to reckon she was on her feet 12 hours a day, even in her 70’s.  It’s hard to do her justice with a simple blog post…but I’ll try.

She was known for her good cooking!  She was a true southern woman that cooked from scratch…with lots of Crisco.  She cooked three meals a day, every day and often invited our family over to partake in her fixin’s.  She made the world’s best roast and world’s best pinto beans and fried cornbread – my favorites!  And her sweets!  She made chocolate cake with this thick, fudge icing that was to die for!  At every holiday, she probably made ten or more pies because each guest had their favorite.  (Mine was this lemon gelatin pie with a graham cracker crust…delish!)

She loved my brother and I to no end!  I think I mentioned before that she always had a little shed or playhouse for us.  She’d buy us 5th Avenue bars and circus peanuts and we’d eat them while watching the Price is Right or Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman.  We were fortunate enough to live across the street from them for a good ten years of our life and got to spend significant time over there, especially when we were younger.

In the summer when my parents were working during the day, we spent most of the work day running in and out of her screen door and making mud pies in her backyard.

She gave the world’s best back scratches.  I can still see her hands in my mind.  They were old and arthritic; her knuckles swollen to twice their size a lot, with pretty filed up fingernails.

She was a worshiper!  She sang and hummed all day long…washing dishes or cooking with her dish towel thrown over her shoulder, much like I find myself doing when I’m in the kitchen, too.

I always loved her Bible.  It was a big, black one with rose colored page edges.  She always had the inside covers filled with birthdays and anniversaries and baptisms and I loved to skim through it and read all the little notes she’d written inside.

She had the cutest little curse words, too.  🙂  I can still see her face screwed up in disgust over something on the news and can hear her saying, “Well, pudding foot!” or “God bless a mule!”  Of course, there were some “bless his heart”s thrown in there every now and then.

My parents did a really good job of teaching us to honor our grandparents and to serve them when they couldn’t serve themselves.  Every Saturday for a good ten years, my mom or dad would load them both up and take them to shop at Wal-Mart and then the grocery store; no small feat with two kids and two people in their 70’s/80’s.

They came to any and every function of mine and my brother’s that they were able to.  They showed us so much love and so much encouragement and so much devotion.  Pretty sure we did no wrong in their eyes…  I loved any and every minute that I had with them and doggone it, there just weren’t enough. 

My Papa died when I was a junior in high school and my Mema seemed to go downhill rather quickly after that.  She bounced around from each of the siblings’ homes for a while and then had to be put in a nursing home.

I wish I’d have had more time with her.  I wish I’d have listened to more stories and more history.  I wish I wouldn’t have thought my life at 18, 19 and 20 was so much more important than anything else in the world.  I wish I would’ve made the time to see her more, even if she had no idea who I was.  I wish she were still alive and lucid so that my husband and kids could really know the wonderful woman I knew…I have no doubt that she’d think that Sawyer and Wryder hung the moon!

Wrex and I happened to be in Texas when we got word from the nursing home that she didn’t have much longer.  We all went down to see her and it was such a hard, awkward thing for me.  I’m one of those people that feels so things soooooo deeply that it physically hurts…and this was one of them.

I remember being half scared to move or say or anything; I just stood towards the back of the room and looked at her from afar.  Oh, the guilt I carry from that…it kills me.  I remember she kept moving her arm or hand under the covers and we didn’t realize what was going on and it finally hit us; she actually did recognize my brother and I…and she was waving.  Once we waved back, she stopped.  It was one of those beautiful God moments that I don’t feel like I took full advantage of.

I remember my dad giving her drops of water with a cotton swab and him petting her hair and talking to her so sweetly.  I remember thinking that this really couldn’t be it, could it?  She seemed half alert and ok, though she was so small and frail.  I don’t really remember saying goodbye…a proper one at least…and then we got the call as we were driving back to Colorado that she had passed.

I am so thankful that she knew the Lord and that because of that, I will be reunited with her in heaven one day.  I just have to believe the Lord will allow me redeem that time with her…  Mema, forgive me for being so awkward and selfish in your final moments; it wasn’t a true reflection of my heart for you…

Oh, how I want my kids to know and understand the rich history and heritage that they come from; to know and appreciate their grandparents and great-grandparents.  I want them to sacrifice their days serving them and caring for them; they are why we are.  I want them to truly understand that our time here is short and the things we think are important in the moment, just might not be. I want them to be unafraid of their emotions and to understand that showing love and letting go can hurt…but that not doing so can hurt worse…

She was a good woman, that Mema.  Darn these pregnancy hormones…

One thought on “My Mema”

  1. Wow, such a beautiful post, Stef! This is a story of yours that I haven’t heard before. She sounds like she was a wonderful woman and that you are better for having had her in your life. Love you so much!

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