My Gram

I tried to write this post on 9/3, just before we left for Montana. I just couldn't finish it and it was getting so long, I just had to stop and put it away for a while. I hadn't been sure whether to write about this subject or not, but decided I NEEDED to write it out - even if after I was through, I erased it all.

(Sigh) I lost my Gramma Sanner on August 22. (I pause and read it again then watch the cursor flash... sigh). Sometimes I feel just devastated and my heart broken. It may sound naive or ridiculous, especially because she was 90 and in light of her long battle with Alzheimer's, but in my heart of hearts, I did not think that day would ever come.

I mean, I have thought about that day and worried about that day ever since I was 3 years old. Yes, literally, three, but when push came to shove, in my heart I believed what I'd told her once as a small child. She was standing at the kitchen sink, I walked directly to her from the living room and frankly announced, "Gram, you'll never live without me and I'll never live without you. Either the the Rapture will come or we'll just die in a car accident together." I know, a little morbid, especially for someone not big enough to see over the kitchen counter, but that is what I said. And ever since, something in me really believed it. Even as we prepared to drive up home on Wednesday night as we knew she was failing, I was paranoid that I would be in a car accident. The other half of me was waiting for "the trumpet" to sound. I guess I stopped thinking like that once I got to the Home. It was less about me having to live without her and more about her being okay... I mean, not in pain or distress.

At least she was not alone throughout the last days. My aunt took the day shifts and we (mom, Jess, and I) took the evening/overnight shifts. Luckily for us, Jess and I were there at the moment she took her last breath. We figured she knew that was as peaceful and alone as she was going to get. She could never get rid of us in her lifetime - two little stinkers following her around, hanging on her - why would it be different now? Maybe she waited for my kids. I don't know. She had seen everyone else and she passed about an hour and a half after my kids and husband left. Or maybe she didn't want Nance or mom to have to be there...... Or maybe she just wore out.

Either way, she was a fighter. She was a fighter by nature. From the moment she was born at around 2 pounds, she fought. She survived while her bigger, seemingly healthier, twin brother died in infancy. She dealt with a sick child and when he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, she and grandpa worked for a dollar a day on a neighbor's farm to be able to get a ride up to Shriner's Hospital to see him every Sunday. That went on for about 3 years. She buried her husband when she was 54, all 4 of her brothers and her sister, all three of her step-children and all of her brothers and sisters-in-law except one.

I know many other facts and figures to describe her. I know lots of stories about her life like they were my own. I often asked her to tell me stories, even the same ones, over and over again. We were together a lot. I spent my entire childhood right next door to her and spent every non-school night sleeping in her bed until about the 8th grade. (The only exception was Christmas Eve, when she would sleep in my bed. ) Her house was my favorite place to be and she was my favorite person to be with. I still clearly remember saying good-bye to her as I left for college. We were both crying our eyes out. (My sister was beaming, because she finally got my room and gramma all to herself =)

Instead of more facts and figures, here are some adjectives: honest, hardworking, virtuous, loving.

She was insanely honest. I remember playing hide-and-seek at her house and having to make up a rule that you couldn't ask Gram where the hider was. You'd ask "Did they go upstairs?" and you'd know by the look on her face. She didn't WANT to tell you, but had to. (I only know of one time in my life-time where she held something in, not lied, but didn't tell. It caused her actual physical illness.)

She was a hard worker. Another farmer's wife described my gram as the hardest working woman she knew. I only saw her in her sixties and beyond but even then she was still a wonderful example of (... I looked it up in the thesaurus, there are no good synonyms for hard working.... industrious, no... diligent, eh... I propose a new adj: Weaziness ... (from Louise)...) I remember her throwing hay bales from the wagon onto the escalator in her seventies, hauling water 100 yards to her parched garden, and beating back huge cows from a watering hole with a big stick. (I also remember her being kicked against the barn doors by one of those same cows, breaking her ribs. Did she go to the hospital? You can probably guess, she didn't.)

She was caring. When my grandpa was alive, their house was like a half-way house; supplying a home to most anyone, from a wayward teen, to a distant relative, to a swarthy North Carolina chicken fighter. Her brother's mother-in-law and an old ailing farmer each asked to come live with Weazy and Mose in their final days, just knowing she would take good care of them and be of a good attitude in doing it.

She was loving. She loved her grandchildren. We knew it from her hugs, her kisses, her kindness, her generosity, her delight in taking care of us, and because she told us (and you just knew it was true.) Jess and I clearly spent a lot of time with her and if there is one thing I know, it's that she loved each and every one of us the same. Even if she didn't see them much, she had a story about each one and would beam from ear-to-ear while telling me of this cherished memory. I have to be honest... sometimes her fairness in love with us irritated me. I felt like, "she loves them just as much as she loves me!..... but I love HER more!" The "I love you more" game was a favorite of Jess and mine... each telling her we loved her more than the other. =) ... then mom would always trump us with "I loved you first."

Finally, she was a faithful Christian. If you'd come to the house and didn't find her doing chores, you'd find her reading her bible. She took me to church, taught me to pray, and had a huge impact on me being saved. Accordingly, I felt a very special and unique bond with her. We were even baptized together. She is what I aspire to be, as a woman, as a worker, as a Christian, as a grandmother.