One of my most treasured memories of my great-grandfather was a conversation that I was never even supposed to hear. We were on the back porch with a friend of his, watching hummingbirds fluttering around against a tranquil backdrop of the mountains surrounding his land. He had just gotten the news that his wife had cancer, and that she would be dead in no more than five years. And then he cried. I never thought I would see him cry, he was the strongest man I’ve ever known, giving all he could to his family and friends, still running his construction business and working in his field up in his seventies. The only thing that could break him was the thought of life without his beloved wife.
Well, that fear was never realized. In an ironic twist, it was him who died five years later, and his wife continued living seemingly unaffected by the cancer for which she never had any chemo or radiation, until today, thirteen years after diagnosis.
My great-grandmother was always a feisty woman, and if you crossed her or her family she could be plain mean. It was truly a sight to see a 4’9" woman telling someone twice her size off. She was a smart woman, and met ignorance with her great wit. When her sheltered 18 year old daughter was pregnant with my mother and asked her, “Mama where will it come out?” she famously replied, “Where do you think?! The same place it went in!” She was at least as strong as her husband. Two years after she was supposed to be dead she was busy walking a mile up a mountain with my mom and I. And until about two years ago she was completely independent, still cooking big meals for the family, still cleaning her house herself, still going up and down the steep stairs everyone told her she couldn’t.
Then the cancer began to take it’s toll. One of her kids had to be with her at all times. It was frustrating for her because her mind was as sharp as ever, it never failed her, just her body. For the past few months she had been here in Florida visiting my grandparents, and was doing relatively well. Then the constant pain started, she stopped eating and wasted away to 69 lbs. A few weeks ago she had to go to the hospital because she was in kidney failure. She decided she didn’t want to stay any longer and she left looking and sounding better than she had in months. My grandparents though the still had plenty of time to take her back to her home in Kentucky, to see the rest of the family and be in the house her husband had built for her. But within two weeks she could barely move.
Yesterday they started the trip up to Kentucky, and stopped by to see me. As I held her tiny hand she told me she just wanted to die and be out of her pain, but through all that she still wanted to know if I had had fun at karaoke the night before. She raised up, which was no small feat, and gave me a hug goodbye, and they drove away to stop for the night at her sister’s house.
This morning with my grandmother and her sister giving her a bath she took her last breath. A part of me wishes that she would’ve made it back to her home, but another part of me knows that she wouldn’t have wanted everyone there to see her, a fiercely independent woman, in that state, wouldn’t have wanted them to see what that bastard cancer finally accomplished.
I know that she was blessed to have lived as long as she did, but knowing her she would’ve given up the past couple of years to avoid the state she died in. Now some of the money-grubbing family will fight over the house and everything in it, and will probably start a fight at her funeral. A great woman’s life is over and a constant in my life is no longer.