Who is someone you wish you could see again?

There are two people from my life that I would equally like to see again, both of my grandmothers.

Nanny

Yesterday, I posted about a possible ghost experience with my Nanny, who died when I was just 6 months old. She was my mom’s mother. She was a single mother of five children who outlived two husbands and one divorce. She was only 45 when she had a massive heart attack that took her life. She lived a hard life but went way too soon. My mom was only 22 when her mother died and her siblings were 23, 17, 16 and 12.

I never knew my Nanny, but I have heard lots of stories about her. She and my mom were very close, and from what I understand, she was a very lively and fun person to be around. I was her first grandchild and have been told that she adored me. When I was a kid, I sometimes daydreamed about what it would have been like to grow up with her in my life. I always pictured her as the type who would take me on adventures and introduce me to new experiences. I still wonder the same thing today and like to think that maybe my interest in trying new things came from her. I know my mom says that she still misses her every day, even 35 years later.

Granny

My dad’s mother was called Granny by my brother and me. I feel blessed to have a memory of her. She died in 1991 when I was 14. She, too, lived a very hard life but in a different way. She grew up poor, worked hard and had 7 children. She was known for her Granny Biscuits that she made every Sunday morning for anyone and everyone who came to her house for breakfast. Her biscuits were made by hand, then kneaded and cut on the floured surface of her kitchen table. She didn’t like having a telephone in the house, so she never knew who all would show up and would cook more if the food ran out. She also cooked her bacon slow, so it was long and flat, not curly.

In my earlier memories of my Granny, she worked at the Dollar General on Charlotte Pike (that’s now a thrift store), and I remember going there to visit her. When she retired, she mostly stopped driving and stayed home most of the time. She walked down to the corner market every day to buy The Tennessean paper, and I remember thinking that was a long way for her to walk at her age and wondered why she didn’t drive to the store or get a subscription. Now I see that it was only a block away, and that the exercise was probably important to her. In the summer time, my brother and I would stay with her about once a week to spend time with her. While she wasn’t frail or had a long term illness, my mom often reminded me that we might not have too many days left with Granny, so I treasured that time with her.

Granny told me that she had to quit school after the 8th grade because it was too expensive for her to continue going to school. At the time, I didn’t understand this because school is free, right? I later learned that it was expensive to keep good shoes and clothes, as well as how helpful it was for her to stay at home to help out on the farm. She always stressed to me how important it was to stay in school and learn as much as I could, because she wished that she would have been able to finish school. She taught me the value of education and reading.

I’ve been told that I look a lot like her in her younger days, though there aren’t too terribly many photos of her in that time. If she wasn’t reading the paper, she was reading a book and would read when she went to bed (again, much like me). One Saturday night in August, she went to bed as usual, and I have been told that she either had a heart attack while she was reading or she fell asleep while reading and had a heart attack. On Sunday morning, one of my uncles came for breakfast to find the doors locked and no smell of biscuits and bacon coming from the kitchen. My Granny had died with a book on her chest. That’s got to be the absolute best way to leave this world, if you ask me.

If I could see my grandmothers again, I would fill the time with all sorts of questions for them and ask them to tell me stories of their lives. There’s so much I would love to know about them!

 Who would you want to spend a day with again (it doesn’t have to be someone who is deceased)? What would you do?