Legacy
An essay by Gerry Wilson on her proud and indomitable north Mississippi grandmother, with art by Victoria Meek
The copyright date on the little leather-bound book is 1925. It contains pointers on business and Constitutional law, postal information, interest calculation, cleaning tips, weights and measures, “How to Prevent Fires,” maps of the United States and the world, the complete 1920 census for all U.S. cities over 10,000 population, blank calendar pages.
The book might have been a business token given to my maternal granddaddy, but my grandmother filled its pages with recipes written in pencil. Sometimes she wrote sideways and upside down to make use of every bit of space. My grandmother was frugal. She had to be. The ledger is a testament to hard times and to her indomitable spirit.
During the Great Depression years, when she kept a cow and chickens in the lot behind the house, she used the book as a ledger where she kept track of the milk, cream, and eggs she sold to neighbors.
Mosebys, 1 gal milk, 15 c
Purdons, 1 lb butter, 35 c
Hydes, 1 doz eggs, 25 c
My grandmother was a proud woman. She wouldn’t like you to know that she only completed the eighth grade, but it was the best education available to her, living out in the country in north Mississippi in the early part of the 20th century. I wonder what it cost her to rise in the dark to milk the cow and gather eggs, to churn butter to peddle to her neighbors, to dig and hoe and sweat in the garden, dirt permanently embedded under her fingernails? She never talked about those times, and I never asked—a thing I regret immensely. The little book is the only evidence I have of those hard times.
What kind of future had she envisioned when she married my granddaddy a month after he came home from France in 1919? Surely not his debilitating tuberculosis, long illness, and early death. Not forty-five years of survival without him. Not the backbreaking work, the weathered skin, the failing heart.
I am the only child of an only child. My parents, my mother’s parents, and I lived together in a little brick house far too small for us. The dynamic of that household puzzles me still. I called my mother “Mother” and my grandmother “Mama,” as though I had two mothers. When my granddaddy became an invalid in his last years, caring for him became my grandmother’s singular passion, something she did with unflagging energy and devotion. I remember him, sitting up in bed, smoking his Lucky Strikes in spite of having only one lung, listening to baseball games on his radio. When he died—I was ten—my grandmother turned inward. She became sad, bitter, and difficult.
Before long, she too became ill: first a heart attack, later a stroke, one broken hip and then another. My mother took good care of her, but their relationship was fraught with tension. My dad was the peacemaker. Fourteen years older than my mother, he was closer in age to my grandmother than to his wife. Fortunately, he was a gentle, peaceful man, and my grandmother loved him. When he died, the buffer between the two women was gone.
A couple of months after he died, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. What my grandmother understood about my mother’s illness, I don’t know, but the dynamic between them didn’t change. I remember not long after Mother’s diagnosis, my grandmother made a cutting remark to her and stalked out of the kitchen. I can still hear the angry, thumping sound of her walker on the hardwood floors. My mother slumped against the kitchen counter. “Nothing I ever do will be good enough,” she said.
I knew it was true.
As harsh as it may seem, my response to their conflict was to keep as much distance between us as possible. I was there when my mother was going through radiation treatments and surgery. I was there three years later when the doctor delivered her terrible prognosis. That day, driving from the hospital to our family home twenty miles away, I remember sobbing and then desperately trying to compose myself, knowing I had to find the words to tell my grandmother her only child was dying.
My granddaddy’s death had broken her heart, and my mother’s death seemed to break it all over again. “Why not me?” she would say. She had nothing to live for. And yet, live she did, until she was ninety-seven years old.
She stayed on in the house she had shared with my parents until it became dangerous for her to do so, even with sitters. She forgot her medications. She left the electric stove on. It fell to me to do what my mother hadn’t done: I arranged for my grandmother to move to a nursing home. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that.
Visiting her became my burden. I would drive the three hours “home” and steel myself before I entered her room, preparing for the onslaught of complaints, the reeling sadness. Be patient, I told myself; she’s lost her only child. I couldn’t begin to imagine her grief, and for that reason, I think—because I didn’t know what to do with her grief or with mine—I counted the hours until it was time to leave. I never left her that she didn’t cling to me and say, “This may be the last time you’ll ever see me.” Eventually, that turned out to be true: I left her on a Saturday afternoon, unaware that it was the last time we would see each other.
The day she died, her doctor, a family friend, called me. She had fallen at the nursing home and had been rushed to the hospital twenty miles away.
“You need to come,” he said.
I threw some things in a bag. What would I find when I got there? How long would I need to stay? The drive ordinarily took three hours, but road construction sent me on a long detour, and heavy thunderstorms rolled through and forced me to slow to a crawl. Finally, the weather cleared. I arrived at the hospital, stopped at the information desk to get her room number, and hurried, breathless and anxious, to her room.
I didn’t make it in time.
My grandmother was curled in the fetal position. A small woman, she was further diminished in death, as though the slightest breeze might lift her and carry her away. A nurse gave me the few possessions that had made the rushed trip to the hospital. Her glasses. Her false teeth. (Remember the pride; she would have been mortified.) The locket I’d given her a few Christmases before with photos of my mother and me inside it. She never took it off.
Although our relationship was often messy—we were two strong-willed women—I don’t doubt that my grandmother loved me, and I loved her. One of my earliest memories is of her bringing me “surprises” when I was sick: a china doll that had belonged to her when she was a little girl, a bird’s egg, flowers from the yard. She was the family’s teller of tales, although at some point, I realized she often told different versions of her stories. Maybe that was a function of her age and failing memory, or maybe the stories evolved as she told them, like writing fiction. If I have a gift for words, I think it must have come from her.
Story-telling wasn’t her only gift. She could grow anything, but she loved her flower gardens best and won prizes at the county fair for her arrangements. She was an intuitive cook. Most of the recipes I inherited have her notes scribbled in the margins. She was a creative in the truest sense.
None of those things matter, though, as much as the spirit embodied in the little ledger I’ve kept all these years. As hard and sad as her life was, she didn't break. She believed in the future, especially mine. She wrote me prayerful letters when my life looked bleak, encouraging strength no matter how hopeless things might appear to be. My life now would seem wondrous to her. She would be amazed to see my debut novel in print. I wonder if she would see herself in it, because she’s there on every page in the unbreakable spirit of the main character in spite of backbreaking work and poverty and injustice and loss and grief. I like to think my “mama” would be proud that the novel is dedicated to her.
loved reading this - always interesting to think about how generations and perspectives and outlooks have changed - what a different world, between hers and yours. thank you for sharing this very personal story. love to you and your family's memory.
honest and inspiring. thank you. the role that grandparents can play in our lives is sometimes very very large significant important hearts across the generations