Finding the Whole Story....

While cleaning out the bathrooms in my grandmother's house I found some things that I thought were worth saving. Here's some Avon Antiseptic Powder. I'm not sure exactly what you would use it for, but the bottle claims it can be used for "prickly heat" whatever that is.

I also thought that this bottle of Maybelline Mascara Remover was also neat. I never knew my grandmother to wear mascara, so I'm not sure why she had this, how old it is, or whose it really was.

Also while cleaning out the linen closet I came across some extra sets of sheets:

As you can see, the sheets are so neatly folded you would think they had never been used. I did know that my grandmother was very particular especially when folding sheets because I've witnessed it. She could fold a fitted sheet better than anybody I know. Well, I never knew that she would store extra sheets individually labeled with the size and kind (fitted or flat). Some sets were even tied together neatly with string. This just amazes me. That type of thing makes me think that if I didn't know this tiny detail about how she kept her sheets what else do I not know about her and her "story".

It turns out, I don't know a lot about her.

While talking with my aunt on the phone and reminiscing about pictures I was looking at in old church directories, I learned for the first time that my grandmother's mother (my great grandmother, who I knew well---she died in 1999) had brain surgery in the late 1970s and that my grandmother nursed her back to health, even teaching her how to feed herself again. How was it that I never knew this?

I visited my grandmother very often as a child, and in turn we visited her mother who lived not too far away. When my great grandmother moved into a nursing home in Durham, NC my grandmother and granddaddy would go and visit her almost every Saturday. How is that for devotion? I knew my grandmother really loved her mother and was always thinking of her and her needs but I now better understand the great devotion that she had to her own mother. A mother that I've heard really did not reciprocate this love at least outwardly with saying, "I love you" to her daughter on a rare occasion. I do remember my grandmother telling me that her own mother did not tell her "I love you" until the years right before her death. Not that she didn't love her or her other 4 children, but it was unspoken.

I was with my Grandmother when she got the call that her mother had died. In fact, I was the one that handed her the phone. I distinctly remember being in her living room, and we were working on sewing flags for my senior year of high school (I was in the Marching band color guard). My grandmother, upon hearing the news, fell to her knees and cried out, "My mother!"

Since her mother lived to the age of 98, I always had in my mind that my grandmother would live that long as well. We would talk about it, and she would always tell me that she didn't think that would be the case. Maybe she already knew that she wouldn't, but I wouldn't want to hear about it and so we'd go on talking about something else.

I really do miss her conversations. Here's hoping that I can uncover more of her "story" to help me keep her legacy alive.