Last Sunday, my cellphone rang, rousing me from my sleep. It was my mother. My great-grandmother (affectionately known as "MaMa" pronounced "Maw Maw") was dying and not expected to make it through the week. My mom was going to make arrangements for our family (her, my grandmother and me) to travel to North Carolina. I sighed deeply, rolled over and went back to sleep.
For weeks, we had been getting calls about the erratic status of her health. One day, we'd hear that she had been rushed to the hospital and was at the point of death, the next day she would make a miraculous recovery. She was 102 years old, so we had pretty much resolved her dying was bound to happen at some point, probably sooner than later. My mom and I had started to tire of the limbo of it all, but I figured that there was something that she was waiting on, eventually I reasoned that it was my grandmother.
My grandma is the oldest of MaMa's four surviving children (she turns 77 tomorrow). Unfortunately, even though North Carolina isn't that far (45 minutes by plane) from DC, we have never made it down there with any regularity. Last April, our visit was also a sad occasion, the death of my great uncle, Bob. MaMa was lucid then. Very frail in physical form, but her mind and tongue were just as sharp as ever. My grandma would walk into MaMa's room and almost yell at her "It's your big daughter! Do you know who I am?" and MaMa would examine her slowly and then ask "Do you know who you are?", making everyone explode with laughter.
After an exhausting eight-hour train ride, my grandma entered MaMa's house and went straight to her room. "This is your big daughter" she exclaimed, but this time MaMa didn't have a snappy comeback. She laid in bed quietly, her eyes looked like they had been sealed shut. She was always a slender woman, but illness had left her emaciated. My cousin had stopped trying to feed her, only swabbing her mouth with water so she wouldn't completely dehydrate. Her breathing was labored and slow. I knew it was nearing the end. There was no way she would make it through the night.
My grandma and I sat at her bedside. I scanned the wall, because it was hard to watch her struggling for air. Posted up was the poem my cousin Tara wrote and read at her 100th birthday celebration. Above her bed was a neon yellow "Do Not Resuscitate" order. It was too much, but I couldn't move. I wanted to be there. My grandmother looked at me and said "she's already gone", but remembering that the hearing is the last thing to go, I insisted that we talk to her. My mom, trying to avoid it all, busied herself with unpacking. I told her to come into the room. She came, but looked sheepish and said she didn't know what to say to her. I asked her to do whatever felt comfortable and natural.
"I can sing", she said and I told her to do that. She said she didn't know what to sing, so I told her to sing one of MaMa's favorite hymns. She and my grandma began to sing to MaMa, and her breathing got slower and slower. Finally, when it was just my grandmother and I, around 4 am on November 24th, MaMa took her final breath.
I called my cousin Mike, MaMa's primary caretaker, to the room. I told him that she was gone. He cried and searched for a pulse. I went to get my mom and tell her. Crying, he told me to see if I could find a pulse. I touched the bony area around her neck and felt nothing. From there, I went on auto-pilot. I couldn't allow myself to feel, because we had things to do. He gave me the card to call hospice, I dialed and told a perfect stranger that MaMa was gone. I answered all of the questions I could and then set about trying to still myself.
Mike dialed number after number, waking our relatives from their sleep to tell them about MaMa. My uncle, Huck, who MaMa raised, came back from visiting a friend. I told him before he could get through the door. His loud cries echoed in the cold morning air.
As the sun came up, people began arriving to the house, some with tears in their eyes, some calm until they came into her room and saw her. A chorus of wails filled that little house. The pain in there was as thick as the love that held it up and kept it standing. It hurt to watch folks walk in calmly and then leave her room inconsolable. But that's how much MaMa meant to people.
Not only was she the matriarch of our family, but she was essentially the mother to an entire community of people. From what I could tell, there isn't an individual within a 20 mile radius of her home, whose life she hasn't affected.
For me, she raised my mom - and although that upbringing was tumultuous for a number of reasons, it was not absent of love. When I was younger and would come for visits, MaMa was the person who tried to draw me out of my inner world to play with the other kids. Actually, she didn't try, she threatened me with a switch. But that too, was the way that she loved.
I managed to hold it together until I saw the hearse, and finally her body covered with a white sheet being carried away from the house. I stood beside my mom, thinking that I would be able to be strong for her. But the sight made me ache and hurt in a way I haven't hurt since my daddy passed in 2005.
Friends have been calling and texting to ask me how I am doing. Honestly, the past few days have been rough, to say the very least. But, in the same way, it has been a blessing too.
There is a strange comfort in knowing that MaMa passed the way that she did and even that I was a part of it. Growing up in DC, away from my family in North Carolina, I have always felt terribly disconnected. So much so, that I thought her death would not affect me the way that it did. But, in the midst of this, I feel closer to my family than I ever have. I felt closer to her than I ever did before.
When I read her obituary, the part that says that she died "surrounded by loving family members" is true. I know, because I was there. For all of the cookouts and birthdays and holidays that I have missed, at the most pivotal of moments, I was there.
I am still processing so much of what has transpired. But there are some things I definitely gleaned already:
1) We are not in control, God is (and how blessed we are because of that)
2) Family is more important than anything
3) I may not come from much monetarily or by society's standards - but I am a descendant, an heir to greatness.
When Pastor Lowery (who MaMa also had a hand in raising) eulogized MaMa, I was overcome with pride for who she was. This diminutive black woman who feared nothing and no one, who spoke her mind, who taught and gave and lived and loved beyond my comprehension - she is a part of me. If I ever doubt my own strength, my own talents, my own abilities - I need only to think of MaMa, who did not have a third of the opportunities, that I have been blessed with, but with God on her side, always made a way for herself and others.
God bless you MaMa and thank you, with all my heart.
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