Have you ever had something so heavy on your mind that nearly everything you see or do seems somehow connected? This is that dreadful, dreary month of September and Granny’s passing has taken the forefront once again. I’m reminded of her everywhere I turn and even though they are all warm, happy, loving memories, I can’t help also being filled with such an overwhelming sense of loss.
I had planned on only dropping by a few sites of fellow bloggers and maybe leaving a comment or two, but even that has brought me back to Granny. Moonbeam was talking about preachers who ended sentences with -unghs just like Granny’s preacher use to do and I’m suddenly transported back to sitting beside Granny, playing with her old black bible. Connie told us about plans to attend a contemporary gospel concert at Walt Disney World and I can hear my Granny singing “That Old Ship of Zion.” Religion has been the topic in so many circles lately and, for me, that word is pseudonymous with Granny. Zsterling wrote nothing short of a tribute to her grandmother who is near the end of her journey and I walked in those very shoes two years ago.
There hasn’t been a book made with enough pages to write about what a wonderful and colorful person I was so blessed to have as a grandmother, but I can’t leave here tonight without sharing some of her with others.
Granny was barely 5 ft. tall, but for most of her adult life was very overweight. My uncle even made up a song about her to the tune of “Big John”:
“Early in the morning you could hear her rise, standing 4 ft 9 weighing 185, Big Hanner (Papa’s nickname for her). She was narrow at the shoulder and broad at the hip, and none of us kids ever give any lip to big Hanner.”
Typing it out now, it sounds rather mean, but you’d have to know Granny and her relationship with her son to appreciate it, I guess. She was a “hard living woman” when they were all growing up and that song just got her goat cause she had risen above all that. The woman we grandkids knew was like a pod-people replacement for the woman our parents grew up with, so we’ve been told. For instance, a customer at my grandfather’s service station once cut through the corner of her sacred front yard with his car while she was out mowing and she picked up the push mower (not those light-weight jobs we have today) and launched 30-some ft. against the side of the man’s car! She also had some hogs that kept rooting through the fence and after gathering them up one morning, she took a butcher knife from the kitchen and laid each of their noses open! Hey, it worked! Cheaper than putting rings in their noses, for sure. Oh, it gets better. Apparently, my grandfather was “keeping time” with another woman and my grandmother hunted the two of them down, drug the woman out of Papa’s car, and carved her initials into the woman’s forehead with a penknife so she wouldn’t forget just who grandpa belonged to! She had 7 kids to raise! Divorce was NOT an option, so she did what was needed to protect her interests. And men today fear paying child support? We women should go old-school on em! Women would sure think twice about messing with a married man, huh? When I said hard living, I wasn’t exaggerating! After all, we are talking about moonshining-mountain-folk!
I use to listen to these stories about her as if listening to a fiction novel. Not believing one word, but loving the tales all the same. The Granny I knew was at Church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday Prayer Meeting, and attended every night of Revival. Well let’s face it, she had a lot of sinning to make up for, he, he. Grandpa said none of us would ever have to go to Church cause Hanner had enough faith to save us all. Lord knows she prayed hard enough for us! When I was little, I use to sleep right between Granny and Papa, listening to her pray until Papa’s snoring got too loud for her to continue. Three minutes into it, I think he half the time faked it, ha! When I got bigger, Granny slept with me in the guest bedroom and her prayer could last for half an hour or longer! She would tell me a couple of bedtime stories like “Rawhide and Bloody Bones,” really scary and morbid crap, he, he, and then commence to praying. They all started the same.. “Lord be with [this daughter] on her trip to the grocery store tomorrow. Those roads are so winding, Lord, and this snow has been so heavy. And Lord be with [this daughter]. Her heart is troubled, Lord, and she needs you guiding light to bring her peace.” Not only would she mention each and every child, but remember every person on the prayer list at Church, pray for all the sinners that hadn’t found their way to her Church, and pray for all those Jehovah Witnesses and Jews who weren’t on the right path to the kingdom of Heaven. Then things would get real intense and she would start in on Papa and Johnny (the aforementioned song writer)! “Lord, my husband doesn’t know you, Lord, but keep your hand upon him. Open his eyes, Lord, to the power and glory in knowing you. Keep your hand on Johnny, Lord. He’s a sheep that’s strayed from the flock and needs you, my Lord and Shephard, to wrap him in the cloak of Christ and bring him back home. Deal with their hearts, dear Lord, humble them to your holy graces. Bring them down on bended knee, Kind and Heavenly Father, so that they can see our Lord upon his throne” Now this part would go on for quite some time and the pillow would be soaked with her tears. I’ve often wondered if Papa and Johnny ever knew how hard that woman prayed for their souls or how many tears she shed for them each night.
As my eyelids grew heavy listening to the melodic chant, I would hear her sniffling and snubbing, saying, “These favors I ask, dear Lord, in His (Jesus) precious and Holy name, Amen.” (Catholics pray through Mary, bible-beaters pray through Jesus, I guess.) I knew her prayer was over and she was drifting off with a much lightened heart. And I don’t know when this habit started, but I would always time my breath with hers and it would put me right out.
In the years before my Granny’s passing, she had finally gotten the diabetes and thyroid problem under control and all that was left of her was a tiny little frame that once bared the weight of a mighty large family and a community full of sinners. She nearly killed herself caring for ole Preacher when he fell ill with Parkinson’s Disease, but I will never forget our conversation the weekend before he passed. She broke down one morning in the kitchen during a visit and told me she thought she had lost her faith. She had been praying every night that God would give Preacher the power to rise up out of that bed and walk. To give him back to her, like he was before. I told my Granny the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to tell her… “Granny, you are praying for the wrong thing now and forgetting the prayer that has been answered.” I reminded her that since Papa had been bedfast, he asked to see a preacher and had been “saved.” Then I reminded her of all those nights she prayed for him to be humbled and brought down to his knees and that this must have been what it took to do it. We had this conversation on a Sunday and my Papa passed Tuesday morning with Hanner by his side. In the days that followed, my grandmother felt such tremendous guilt for praying for something so horrible as Parkinson’s, but her preacher helped her work that out by reminding her how she’d saved him from an eternity in hell. I, of course, felt guilty for having been the one that gave her that idea, even though she later felt like her prayers had saved her husband.
While I can’t even say now with complete faith that there is a God or a Heaven, I can’t dismiss it, either, for stories very much like the one I’ve just told. But even if there isn’t, the belief in such sustained my Granny and probably her entire family as well. I can’t picture the two of them anywhere but Heaven, so it exists for me in that regard.
Isn’t this just amazing? See what power her faith had? I sat out to tell you a few things about my Granny and wound up talking about God and Heaven. The same thing happened to the minister who presided over her funeral services! He started with a couple memories of her and segwayed right into an hour-long sermon. While most of us were upset, at first, that he didn’t really eulogize her, we all had to smile at the thought of Granny finally getting all us sinners assembled under one roof and listening to the Word.
Anyway, it has finally sunk in with me that this month is going to be filled with thoughts and memories of Granny. She passed away on September 26th and that date is fast approaching. Funny how it sneaks into your subconsious, like that, though. I tried for a few years to forget the date my Grandfather passed, but that hasn’t happened yet. I haven’t forgotten their birthdays, either. As painful as it is to remember my loss, I would never want to forget what I’ve lost.
