Thoughts on Granny

There’s something interesting about grief. The death of Granny is an event that I like to call “rock bottom,” but it was really just the opposite. I don’t even know if I’m ready to write about it, because she had such an impact on my life that even now I’m still discovering. She will get (another) short story dedicated to her eventually. But for now I’ll give a basic overview.

It’s not the death of Granny, really, but the life of Mrs. Daisy Huffstickler Hudgens that changed me. For the nine months I spent abroad, updates on family would stress and frustrate me. I felt helpless to change it. I felt guilty I wasn’t there.

Then the summer came, which provided me with the chance to spend three months with Granny. I lived with her and took care of her, including but not limited to dressing, bathing, feeding, and administering pills. But the times in between all of that—all of the conversations and silences—were the life-changing part. I felt helpless and unprepared. I felt stressed and frustrated, and then guilty for being stressed and frustrated. I felt like I was going crazy. I was in back woods North Carolina with no friends, no real civilization, and what felt like no freedom.

We almost lost her at the beginning of the summer. She had a few heart attacks and had luckily not yet signed a DNR order, so she spent weeks in the hospital, in ICU, and then another month in a rehab facility. So I spent my days there. And held her hand, and listened to her complain about doctors’ cold hands (“your fingers are like ice!”) and how the nurses were too rough with her (“ohhh foot, your tryin’a keel me.”). And she was adorable. Like, really, really adorable. Especially when she would talk without her dentures.

And she loved to hear stories about the family. Paul and the wedding that May (“that’s Paul? He’s got hair like a girl!”) and Jessica finally discovering that Granny wore a prosthetic breast (“what did Jessie say about my boob?”). And talking about how she didn’t know what she was going to do without her nurse. Me. Sometimes when I would get her undressed for bed, she would say (with no teeth in, of course), “Johanner, what are you going to do when you don’t have a Granny to look after?” And I would always say, “I don’t know, Granny, I just don’t know.”

And the truth is, I didn’t. I grew to love her, beyond the love that is automatically reserved for family members. It was that generous, selfless love that comes from loving someone’s soul and being beyond the limitations and faults. Of which she had few, minus perhaps the forgetfulness and inability to walk.

But she was so strong. That’s what I’ll remember most. Her brother, Max, would come by once a week or so to visit, and he would say that her will to live was the only thing keeping her alive. “When the Good Lord is ready to take her,” he’d say, “the Good Lord himself is gunna hafta come n’ drag her to heaven.” She made it through two types of cancer, disease and infection, and you couldn’t tell from the level of her spirit. I learned what joy looked like.

And it was true, she wasn’t going anywhere until she was good and ready, and that applied to things beyond heaven. On the flip side, when she was ready to go somewhere, there was really no way to stop her. We had to check her out of the rehab facility early because she would get up and push her way to the door. And oh man, the physical strength that woman could muster when it meant going home and getting back to her cat. That cat. Jesus. Tinker didn’t like anyone but Granny, and she would stay up for hours at night either fussing at or fussing over him.

So I still wonder what to do without Granny around. But I do know that I am so grateful she was a part of my life. I spent nine months abroad learning about other cultures, other people, other ways of knowing. But it took me those three months of being in the sticks of North Carolina to learn what love was. Going back to school that semester was a time of purging my life of the bad, the negative, the hurtful. But after Granny died, this semester was spent reeling in the good, the positive, the joyful. Soaking up every moment and appreciating them in all their beauty. And I know that she was a big part of that.

There's a lesson I learned from Granny that I always say, but never fully understood until last summer. Love isn’t something you feel, it’s something you do.

And I hope I can live up to how well she did that.