I have so much to tell you! I wish I could share some of the recent events in my life. I would love for you to see how far I’ve come considering all I went through. I think you’d be proud of me! You were one of my biggest champions during that growing up thing I struggled through. You never scolded or lectured me even when you were worried I was on the wrong path, that wrong path I flirted with here and there. You asked questions and saw my strengths. You saw what I needed was encouragement not shaming.
You were a servant to your family- cooking, cleaning and working while raising two boys in a time when women didn’t always work outside the home. I never saw you drink a drop of alcohol and you would sometimes sit separately from the family during dinners if there weren’t enough chairs around the main table, hurrying around to get seconds for anyone who complimented your cooking, which was ah-mazing. Dry-fried chicken was a favorite. I still make your vegetable soup we used to eat with crackers and peanut butter on the side.
It was always clear that one of your purposes was to stay on this earth to help me a little longer. The year I was born you almost died of a blood clot and the dime-sized scar on your throat from the tracheotomy was proof of your near-death experience. A practical, conservative Baptist, you were hardly into the metaphysical but you did mention having a dream of a knight on a white horse coming to you when you were unconscious in the hospital. You weren’t overly affectionate or emotional. You were an educator and you had a sense of what I needed to balance my life out- structure, intellectual stimulation, and play.
When you and grandpa used to pick me up from the airport for my two week long visits in Memphis in the summer (can you say SWEATY?), you would sit in the back of grandpa’s Cadillac with me, the strong smell of the velour seats overwhelming in the summer heat. You would examine me starting with taking my hands and commenting on the “half-moon” shapes on my cuticles I’d never noticed before. You complimented my writing and always ended each visit with “Be Sweet” in your thick Southern drawl. I don’t know if I’ve ever been “sweet” in my life but nevertheless I would give anything for you to see your great-granddaughter. I think you’d find her delightful. In fact, she said something very bizarre one time about you. I’d just unpacked your china into our new house, finally on display after so many years of being packed in our basement in the old house. We’d been talking about you, “Grandma Mary” and Ramey looked at me square in the eye and said, “I’m Grandma Mary” and turned around and started playing with something else. I blinked back tears and I have no idea what that meant exactly but I know you are both blessings to me in this life.
Love,
Jami Brooke
Jami's Journal 