Sad day...

My grandmother passed away today. It’s been harsh..

I know people talk like they were close to their grandmother, but not everyone was close like I am.. was.. with mine.

Now you can take that two ways and no it’s not the creepy one. ( like her, I have a dark sense of humor so yes it’s okay to laugh )

Look. I’m poor. Like my bloodlines been poor since the beginning of the America’s. Potatoe farming moonshiners and such. Dirt Spoon poor. And I Love it!

My grandmother, she was the keystone. She was Actually my Great Grandmother. And she is one of my first and most memorable memories of my child good. Like The First remembrance is of sleeping in bed with her every night since age two.

She Was my mother. I honestly grew up conciousky Knowing she wasn’t my mother, but that she was The Mother or my family. And because of that I never questioned why or where my mother had gone. It was never important because I had her.

We lived in a house that was built in... I wanna say somewhere around 1910 or 1913 or so. The property used to be a 1,000 square ship building yard... now if you look up where Mt. Pleasant MI, you’ll see why that’s funny.

She had two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with a wood stove until about 92 when we put and electric stove in there. She had a ladder that went straight up the wall in the biggest bedroom up to the attic which had two more beds. Two small windows at each end and a wooden trap door you had to put down or you Would fall down the hole. No joke.

The floor was dark wood and it went across all the upstairs except next to the very edges. And there are old trunks and photos in there still.

I was born in ‘86. My parents divorced when I was two. My dad was 18 by then and worked a lot of random carnival jobs. So all year while he was gone for seasons I would stay with my grandmother and spend the summers with my dad.

We had no running water inside, no plumbing whatsoever. So in the winters we had a bucket at night or if you were brave there were two outhouses about 100 feet from the house. Which back in the day suuuuucked getting to in the middle of winter.

We used to heat water up in big pots over the wood stove and I took baths in the little water watering trough.

Every summer we had gardens and canned and my grandmother had this old washing machine with a wringer on it that ate my fingers more times than I can remember.

She was old school hillbilly. Knocked a man on his butt once for calling her the b word. Pointed a shotgun on a man that used to harass my stepmother and threatened to make him disappear. She was wild.

Gave me my first beer out driving on backroads going 25 to her favorite mushrooming spot. Taught me to fish and how to cut up meat for the winter.

Crazy crazy real life things I would have Never gotten anywhere else in life.

Eventually she grew even older and needed more help when I was about 18.

So my father moved us next to her and we we come about, and where we stand now is owning 7/125 of that original land (today) and my father has lived with her since 1998. My grandmother passed when my father was 14 so I never knew her. We’ve Always been with my great grandmother though since as far back as I can remember.

I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I just feel like I need to express to someone, no one even, just need to let it out into the universe how great and strong of a woman she was.

We knew this day was coming.. hell she was 94... it feels good that she’s not suffering from dementia anymore, that she’s free from this place.. it’s just hurts.

I am going to miss her so much. I can honestly say I am so thanksful she was my mother. She taught me gardening and because we were small poor farmers I had to learn how to be sovereign and maintain and fix things. So many things that are lost to anything After my generation... it’s sad that strong women like her are unicorns in a world of crap. And they’re dying...

Having my grandmother pass away makes me question things even more. What kind of woman will I be? And how do I make it the fullest life I can? And what can I do now to be strong like her?

I dunno... Time is short people.. this life isn’t about your job. The next party you attend. Who’s the hottest thing or fad. It’s not about Any of that. It’s abigt what you did that left a mark on people.

How are you marking people? What will they remember about us when we die?

I hope everyone was as loved as my grandmother was. So many family and old old long forgotten friends came to see her, people not far behind her. As sad as I am I’m thankful that we all got to say goodbye and prepare.