Lisa's Granny

Granny died at age 95 on Monday, August 29, at almost midnight.  Charles sent friends and family an email “Momma died” at 3:26 am.  Lisa called me the next morning. 

            Lisa flew from Orlando to Little Rock the previous Wednesday when her dad phoned her, “Come now.  She’s very close.”  He’d said it twice before in the past two years, but when Lisa burst in like sunshine and trumpets, Granny rallied and didn’t die. She rallied this time as well, opened her eyes for the first time in a week and swallowed the sherbet Lisa spooned on her tongue even though she’d refused food for days.  Lisa stayed her first five nights alone with Granny at her house, but on Monday she decided her back needed the firmer mattress in the cabin in the woods.  Charles slept in the Big House on Main Street.  Thus neither only son nor only granddaughter were there when she passed, only the caregiver Tonya.

            Granny’s passing is a blessing for all.  She’d said she wanted to die. Everyone believed she was waiting for one last visit with Lisa.  On Monday of her passing, Charles and Lisa gave her a send-off.  Lisa read her Bible: “There’s a time to live and a time to die.”  Charles, the outspoken atheist, sat down at Granny’s piano and rolled out a repertoire of old Protestant hymns that he thought Granny would enjoy, especially her favorite “Amazing Grace.”

            I remember meeting Granny forty six years ago.  Charles took me to Merkel, Texas, to meet his parents after Christmas 1965.  He called them Big Momma and Big Daddy.  I’d never known anyone remotely like either of them. I’d never seen a town as tiny and barren as Merkel.  Silent unsmiling Big Daddy towered more than a foot over Big Momma, a round smiling embodiment of Southern hospitality. 

When we wheeled up to his childhood home, she was waiting.  Charles swung down from his new blue Chevy pick-up.  “C’mere, boy, you not too old to give your Big Momma some sugar.” He craned down from his 6’4” height, same as his dad, so she could wrap her arms around his neck and plant a big smack on his cheek.  Then she took me in. “Why, Charles, you done fine. She’s right purty—just like a full-blown petunia.”  She almost forgave me being a Yankee.  She reached out to me. “C’mere to Big Momma and gimme some sugar.”  I learned the ritual hugging and kissing known as “sugar.”

She stuffed us with ham and turkey, fresh vegetables from her garden and peach cobbler. I could barely understand her unusual twist of language, but I couldn’t miss her devotion to her son and her warmth toward me.  Before we left, she insisted on getting my measurements. “Always wanted a daughter I could make pretty dresses for.”

A few days ago Charles was going through her papers and came across a letter from me sent in 1969 with Lisa’s latest measurements.  Lisa was two years old. He read it aloud to Lisa and she to me on the phone.  I’m touched that Granny saved that dutiful daughter-in-law letter all these years, or maybe she just forgot to toss it.

            After I left her son in 1971, I assumed she thought ill of me.  But in later years when I visited her with Lisa, most recently in May on our drive from New Mexico to Florida, she seemed to accept me as still part of her family.

            Lisa got to know Granny as full of fun and vitality on summer visits to Merkel.  She remembers picking beans off the vine and stringing them.  She enjoyed Granny playing the piano and singing.  Sitting on the front porch, they’d eat watermelon and spit the seeds out to the wide dusty West Texas horizon.  Lisa wrote down some of these memories and read them yesterday at the memorial at Cherry Street Baptist Church in Clarksville, Arkansas.

            Charles promised his momma that he’d take her to be buried in Merkel beside Big Daddy.  Today Charles and Lisa are driving his big white van that usually hauls antiques 10-12 hours from Clarksville to Merkel.  At 3 pm they fetch Dave at the Dallas airport.  I imagine an aerial shot of the van with its four passengers—three living and one in a box—careening down the final stretch of west Texas trailing plumes of dust.   

            Cheyenne hardly knew her great grandmother in her prime of vitality.  But Charles says she looks like Granny at the same age.  Indeed a studio portrait of Neta Spears taken eighty years ago in her teens shows the same lustrous dark hair, wise penetrating gaze, full cupid’s bow lips, and a flash of extraordinary beauty with a hint of Cherokee cheek bones.

            I will remember you fondly, mother-in-law, Big Momma Granny Neta Spears Curb.