The Synergistic Pen

If she were alive, my maternal grandmother would be celebrating her 104th birthday today....

I was 16 years old when she celebrated her 75th birthday... as she blew out the candles, we asked her...what did you wish for...

she said..."I asked God to give me 25 more years."

As I sat next to her on July 24th 2004, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, I thought about that... and how... her request was so simple... all of her requests from God were...

she was laughing and talking to people who had come to wish her glad tidings... she was in her right mind and her spirits were high...

she leaned over and whispered in my ear... I'll stay around til the end of the year, ok?

I just looked at her and said...ok, grans...

I was in New Orleans at a wedding in the French Quarter New Year's Eve, when the strangest sense of loss came over me...I wanted to go home...

on the trip home my husband called the house to make sure ou kids hadn't burned up the joint, when my daughter told me...

"g-grans is gone mama...died last night...they tried to call you in New Orleans." (my phone was dead)

somehow I knew that. she'd promised to stay til the end of the year...

I've wondered since then about how she was so sure of her relationship with God that she could simply request...and it would come to be...

in the 5 months between her birthday and her death, she had a minor stroke...just potent enough to pull her memories of all of us deep inside of her...I became, "the nice lady that came on Wednesdays"...my daughter was "that pretty little thing"... her own daughter was "her"....

my aunt became so stressed and worn down that we temporarily put her in a nursing home (something we said we'd never do)...the evening my daughter and I went to visit her there...she was crying...please take me home...pleaseeeee take me home....

.......
I brought her home the next day, rearranged my schedule and helped my aunt with her more ....

my granny... she saw most of the 20th century... cried and laughed and smiled and frowned at so many things...


for you granny... tell daddy and papa I said hi....