Journal Fortunato_NC's Journal: Loss 2
My grandmother passed away this morning, after a brief illness and a long period of declining general health. Most (heck, all) of you out there never met her. As far as I am aware, she never used a computer. But you would have liked her, if you had known her.
Amelia Pace was born in 1916 to a large family in Henderson County, NC. Her family and everyone else knew her as "Millie". She was valedictorian of her high school class, where she excelled in math, but she did not continue on to college. Instead, she met my grandfather, three years her senior, and she, along with thousands of other nervous wives, sisters, mothers, and girlfriends, waited as her love marched off to World War II.
Luckily, Hilliard Henderson ended up serving stateside, but he was shipped all the way across the country to guard the plants in Washington state where Boeing built the B-17's and B-29's that would rain destruction on Berlin, Tokyo, and dozens of other Axis cities. Millie stayed behind in the NC mountains and worked at a five and ten cent store. On a brief visit home, Hilliard was hanging around the five and ten cent store, and earned five dollars from a patron who was too ashamed to carry his own "slop jar" home. (Incidentally, "slop jar" is a rural euphemism for a bedpan. Carrying one would be admitting your home lacked indoor plumbing.)
When Hilliard returned to North Carolina, he built his young wife a small red brick house with a white door that became home to their four boys, a seemingly endless parade of 4-H animals, chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats. Millie practiced the homemaking skills she had learned at her own mother's apron strings, and fed the intellects of her sons as well as their bellies. She and Hilliard watched their boys grow up into fine men, sent them off to college and eventually into the world of work. Eventually, those four boys would bring home a total of eleven grandchildren, and Millie would answer to a new name: Grandma.
Unfortunately, my grandfather would not share all this with Millie. Diabetes took Hilliard away from her in 1973. She returned from an afternoon gardening to find her life's love collapsed from a heart attack. She buried her husband, but never forgot him. Her phone listing and mailbox continued to read "J.H. Henderson" for the next 26 years.
Grandma adored her grandchildren. She reveled in the chance to share her boundless love, to relate the wisdom accumlated over a lifetime, and to watch a second generation grow up. Summer weekends, she would lead a line of children into the garden, and do the chores that needed to be done, whether it be weeding tomatoes, digging for potatoes, or picking okra. She showed patience when one of us yanked up radishes, leaving morning glories in the ground.
As we got older, Grandma was game to shoot BB rifles with her grandsons, and her excellent marksmanship amazed us. Had we thought about it, we would have realized that she was an excellent shot because for years, she simply stepped out onto the back porch with a
Her garden and her cooking were the two things that defined Grandma. They came together at the Curb Market. The Curb Market is a Hendersonville, NC institution. Vendors rent tables and sell handmade or hand grown goods such as crafts, produce, or in my grandmother's case, prepared foods. Every Saturday morning, Grandma loaded up her car with fried apple pies, homemade soup, banana bread, dried apples, and whatever garden vegetables were in season. Every saturday afternoon, she would return with empty boxes and soup jars returned by loyal customers. She collected money and made change from an old cigar box, with an NC sales tax guide taped under the lid.
When the Curb Market celebrated its 65th anniversary, the Hendersonville Times-News featured my grandmother in a multi-page story "Henderson Comes Back Because Of The People". Grandma told the stories she accumulated over 35 years of running her table at the Curb Market - like when several Mercury 7 astronauts stopped in and bought items from several vendors, then signed one of the tables. (Years later, I would look up the names I had seen on those tables and become enthralled with the stories of the Mercury 7.) She also related in that article that one of her daughters-in-law had calculated her effective wage rate for her Curb Market venture, and it turned out she was making roughly 50 cents per hour. I think she would have done it for free.
If you knew that you could find Grandma at the Curb Market on Saturday, then you also knew that Fruitland Baptist Church is where you would find her on Sunday. She taught Sunday school with her friend Minnie Willis, leading children in learning Bible stories and singing "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know." Together, the two of them introduced hundreds of kids to biblical stories like Noah's Ark, Daniel and the Lion's Den, and of course, the stories of Christ's birth and death on the Cross.
Eventually, the stress of running a household became too much for Grandma, and in 2000, she left her small brick house for the Pardee Center, a long-term care facility. As age robbed her of her mobility, she was as fiesty as ever. When I brought my fiance to meet her, she let me know I was being too affectionate with typical bluntness as she leaned over to my mother and said "Get those two out of here, before they start making love!
Last week, Grandma came down with a severe pneumonia. She started responding to treatment, then took a turn for the worse. As my father told me, this morning she went to be with my grandfather. If there is an afterlife, I like to think that they're catching up now. She's telling him about his grandkids, and I like to think he would be beaming with the same pride I saw in her eyes when she looked at us.
Last month, my cousin and his wife had my grandmother's first great-grandchild. It's time for the next generation of women to assume the mantle of "Grandma". My mother and my aunts will answer to that name, and life will go on. We lost a big part of our family today, but those of us who are still here and hurting today will heal. There is some comfort in that.
re:loss (Score:1)
Re:loss (Score:2)
Somewhere, I took a wrong tu