Week 3

Person of Interest

I obviously skipped week 2, but that is completely because I was too lazy to get anything good and I'm not about to waste your time on not so great photos. This weekend I was out at my grandma's house. She is actually my great grandma and she lives with her daughter, my grandmother. Confused? That's okay. Moral of the story is, I've been learning a lot spending time with two great, old ladies and this is just one of the two. 

Docia Bell is my Great Grandmother and she can make me laugh all day long. She raised 9 children, losing one to cancer as a baby, and before that was raised by a woman who had to "work in the field like a man". Her father died when she was young but her mother must have been a strong woman. She grew up along side several other children in rural Texas during the 30's. I always thought that these kinds of stories were only for movie scripts, but my great grandmother lived that life.

At 86 years old, Grandma has and extremely patient gait. She shuffles her feet inch by inch, taking her time with each step. If I'm ever caught behind her I find myself watching her feet as she shuffles. Step, slide, step, pause. I'm always wondering if one day you wake up and find that you just can't walk the way you used to. Does she get impatient with how slow she moves? Does she even notice? Or do you just slowly get to that point. When you wake up to another slow day. Nothing to do but push the walker in front of you. Her walker's name is Daisy.

I know that aging slowly isn't always the case. Some people don't get the right to a gracious end of life. Great grandmother is pretty lucky in that account. She's 86 years young. The biggest issue she has daily is whether or not there is jello in the refrigerator and when the news is coming on.

I'm often reminded and surprised about how differently my own life has been from hers. Grandma was born in 1925. She remembers when there was no air-conditioning or electricty and when her mamma dreamed of getting a refrigerator. Grandma married an older man at the age of 16. As the story goes, she and my great grandfather and her mother drove to the house of a preacher. They parked at his mailbox and got married right in the truck. The next day, she went to school.

She had a baby at the age of 17, sent her beloved husband off to a world war, watched him come back and had 8 more kids with him. She has most likely witnessed segregation up close and was present in the south while Jim Crow was still in effect. She was around for the deaths of Elvis, Kennedy and Martin Luther King. One thing I can affectionately say about Grandma is, even though she was raised around such prejudice she loves President Obama.

Getting to know my great grandmother over the past two years has really been great. There's so much to learn about people and it's easy to do if you just listen to them with sincerity. Grandma is a unique individual. She has never driven a car, never used a computer, never owned a cell phone and still holds her lady like status. Wherever we go, she doesn't go without her lipstick. She's a different kind of woman than i'm used to. I'm not saying that her life is something I would have wanted. But I'm so glad I'm learning about it.