She was 91. This may be more of a personal blog post, but I always wished that everyone could know the special lady that she was. This is my Nanny.
She was born in 1916, the second of five children in a small town in Louisiana that doesn’t even exist anymore. She and her oldest sister married best friends and the four of them eventually moved to our small hometown after first living in Jacksonville, Florida. They shared a house and helped each other raise their children through the Depression era when just about no one had anything. My great-aunt was even a “Rosie Riveter” who worked here as a welder during World War II.
My great-grandfather was a preacher, and in her younger years Nanny didn’t share his religious beliefs, even though he’d gotten into the church through her. Her pastor inspired him and he came to this part of the country to start a church here where they didn’t have one of his denomination. She was waitress in those days, and a mother of three. She nearly died having her second child and was told not to have another, but only a year later my youngest uncle was born.
Those are just the background details. The lady I knew was a special woman that meant the world to me. She was a petite 4’11" and a fireball of energy throughout my childhood and teenage years. She was devoted to her husband - as he was to her - for 64 years. She was the type of person who always had an open kitchen for anyone. She fed all of us, all of our friends and family until she was no longer well enough to do so. She could cook an entire meal for us all in what seemed like no time at all. She made the very best buttermilk biscuits in the world and also canned her own jelly, mostly plum, that was heavenly. She took an odd pleasure in pulling weeds in her backyard, and invariably she would be out there, nearly every day, scouring the ground for them. She hated to have her picture taken, disliked talking on the telephone for more than a few minutes and really hated it when people “made a fuss” over her.
In my younger years, I spent a lot of time at my Nanny’s house. I was the oldest great-grandchild and it’s not a secret to much of anyone in the family that I was their favorite - but only because I was the one they knew the best. I sought them out and spent time with them. She is the one who inspired my passion for reading and got me a library card of my very own. We went to the library frequently, where I checked out every Nancy Drew book I could find, and she was a Louis Lamour fan, which was always humorous to me. Here my tiny little Nanny was reading all of these books with rough and tumble cowboys from the old west on the cover. I always had a sneaking suspicion she would have liked to have been a more adventurous sort and maybe those books served a purpose for her in that way.
Her husband, my Papa, liked to tell stories. He used to talk about hopping on a train in Louisiana and hitching a ride to Texas just for fun. I marveled at this as a child and asked him how he knew he could get back home. He always would grin at me and simply say “I just hopped on another train going the other way”. He also told me the story of how he convinced his best friend to let him go on a double date with my Nanny and her sister, in place of another friend of theirs. They told the girls that the other boy had to work late and sent my Papa in his place - the rest, as they say, is history.
My Nanny was a forgetful type of person. She never could quite remember where her reading glasses were, even if they were around her neck. She once accidentally locked me into this little room in their house I liked to play in and then went into another part of the house where she couldn’t hear me. I was locked in there for two hours before she wondered why she hadn’t seen me lately.
It would honestly take me far more space than I have here to do the story of my Nanny justice and I cannot say that right now my thoughts are all in order. My Nanny was a huge part of my life and helped to raise me. I looked up to her and admired her more than I can express right now. I always, always told people in my life about her. I wish I could say that all of the family had shared a special moment with her close to the end of her life, but my Nanny has been gone for a long time.
After she had nursed my Papa for about two years, he died, having been in bad health in his later years. He had three heart attacks in 1986 but managed to survive after having quadruple bypass surgery. By the mid-90s, he started to lose his memory. He stopped driving when he left their house one day to drive 3 miles to the hospital for his cardio-therapy and couldn’t find it. He had lived in this town for 50 years and forgot where it was. He had Alzheimer’s. Things went downhill fast from there. He began getting up and dressed in the middle of the night to go to church. My Nanny had to be vigilant of what he was doing at all times. She didn’t want our help. She always said she could handle it herself, right up until the last 6 months. The night he died, she called my mother and it was obvious something was wrong. Her speech was off…like she had been drinking…but they didn’t keep alcohol in the house. We think maybe she drank some cough syrup or something. My grandmother immediately moved in with her. It only took a few weeks to realize that Nanny had Alzheimer’s, too. She’d been hiding it while taking care of him.
She lived with it for 11 years. At first, she had good days and bad days. She would sometimes know who we were and sometimes she wouldn’t. It seemed nearly like an extension of her normal forgetfulness. The past few years, they’ve all been bad days. She had to have surgery in 2002, I think it was, and as is the risk when Alzheimer’s patients go under anesthesia, she never was really cognizant again. It has been so hard to watch her, to see that blank expression in her eyes or have her ask you if you see “that” right outside the window…but there’s nothing there. Sometimes she would say things that at least made you could understand but other times she would literally speak some sort of gibberish. She would sing - loudly - gospel songs she remembered but the words were all wrong. A few weeks ago, my grandmother says she thinks Nanny had a moment where maybe…just maybe…she knew what was going on. She told her “Cherry, I love you and I will be happy when all of this is over.” It is maybe the worst part of all, knowing that there is a chance on some level she knew what had happened to her…and my Nanny was in there, not able to speak clearly or organize her thoughts but that she knew. I really hope that she didn’t.
My Nanny died yesterday, but we lost her to Alzheimer’s many years ago. Nanny, your long struggle is finally over. I miss you so much.
