This chapter, instead of chronicling the last bit of Kara and Boromir's early tale, focuses on a real life hero, the summing of all that I know as beautiful. She deserves an entire story of her own, but my insufficient words couldn't do her justice. Instead, I'll just try my hardest to do the most difficult thing in the world for me....admit that she is gone.
Emma, my great grandmother, stood at four foot even. By the time I was born, her coal black hair had faded to a dark gray at the neck and snow white on top. She had a stocky build, heavy black eyebrows, and a beautiful nature. She wasn't naturally quiet, neither was she boisterous. Even-tempered and deeply intelligent, she looked life straight in the eye, considered it carefully, and smiled.
It is said that the most beautiful blooms fade soonest. For my Great Grandmother (Tenderly known to me as Gran Gran) this was not so. In her mid-eighties, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That, however, is only the final chapter of a rich story.
Emma was born in Texas, and there lived for the rest of her life. Indian blood, pulled from various tribes and influences, ran strong in her veins. She lived with her father and mother for the first few years of her life. All too soon, though, her mother died in childbirth, leaving her as the headmistress of the house. Her only comfort at the end of a day of back-breaking work was to hear her father whistle as he came home from his job with the railroad. Then, one day, he injured his foot jumping off a train car. Emma remembered dressing it, waiting for it to heal. He was a diabetic, and so quite soon he was in the hospital from the infection.
About this time a man came through town boasting that he had started a "home" for children whose families could not afford them. Thinking it was only a temporary situation, Emma's father sent her and her siblings to live in this home. There they were beaten, starved, and sequestered from the outside world. When Emma's father found out about their treatment, he immediately pulled them out. He called Emma to his hospital room. He said he was sorry, and promised to never send them to a place like that again. A year later, when the organization was shut down, a huge crate was found filled with cards the children had been sent by family. They were never received.
Soon after, Emma's father died. This opened up a newer and infinitely happier chapter in her life. She was sent to an orphanage run by a man of God, Father Buckner. For the rest of her life she talked about Buckner orphanage. It was the middle of the depression, but the children never noticed. Even when they ate oatmeal three meals a day, life was still beautiful. Emma grew up in that orphanage, and until the last two years of her life returned for each reunion.
Emma married Leo. He had a happy-go-lucky personality to match her even keel. He called himself "The old Irishman." My gran gran he called "The little general." The name was apt, but she disliked it. With Leo she had five children, and because of them developed what became known as "The Look." One day I asked her to demonstrate it. Without batting an eyelash her tempered face turned into a heavy black thundercloud. I was sure the furies of a thousand hells had fallen upon me. I wilted, slid under the table, and hid. When I poked my head back out, her expression had changed to the normal, easygoing Gran gran that I was used to. I never asked her to show me The Look again.
Emma and Leo raised their children. Though each of them chose their own roads, sometimes roads that their parents strongly disapproved of, their love, prayers, and support never left them. Such is a mother's duty and privilege, one that Emma exercised with a grace that was innate to her.
Each of the grandchildren have said that Emma and Leo always made them feel especially loved, elevated above the cruel mob. However, there was one that I am sure they had a special tenderness for...that one was my mother. During the first part of her life, when times were difficult for her and life was unkind, Granny and Grandpa were always there for her. When home life with her drunken father became too much, they would rescue her, put her in the car, and ask her where she wanted to go. These road trips are now some of her best memories. Later, when my mother was in nursing school, so often she wanted to give up. Her Granny and Grandpa wouldn't hear of it. Today she credits them with the full nursing career she has led.
When Leo died, Emma still smiled tenderly at life. Just before he became sick, I was born. Just as my brother, with his dark hair, dark eyes, and deep tan skin, was almost a photocopy of her, so was I a photocopy of Leo. From him I recieved the gift of reddish-gold hair, fair skin, and eyes that turn brilliant green when I get angry.
My gran gran had a unique character. She excelled at being happy---not just joyful, but happy. She was thoughtful, but not reticient, a homebody, but not a recluse. And how she loved to fish. She could always pick the best spot, pull up the biggest fish, and just smile happily.
Gran gran could see the beauty in everyone and everything. Her little home was a reflection of that---everything in it shone with her love. She lived for visits from her family.
Then, as it has with so many people, one word changed everything, brought our world crashing down around us. Cancer. A tumor had invaded her body, OUR Gran Gran's precious little body, the casing for the jewel that was Emma Atkinson. It originated in her abdomen and wrapped itself around her aorta. Sickening tendrils of cancerous tissue sank into her spine, causing pain that stole her will to breathe. For the last four months of her life, she was on pain medication that would have put a normal person twice her size into a coma, yet with her tiny stature it barely tamed the agony. Our sweet Emma.
Chemo failed. Radiation failed. Prayers were met with a simple answer: No. Still she trusted in her Father. The only time she rested was when she listened to praise and worship tapes, or when the Bible was being read to her. How she wanted to go home!
I remember the night I stayed with her, helped my mom take care of her. She had to be kept on her left side to keep the tumor from choking off her spinal cord. I gave her medication, held water for her to sip, helped give her a sponge bath, helped change her diapers. Morning came, and I had to go. Just before I left, I leaned over the bed railing to give her a hug. Her arm, always covered with a healthy layer of flesh, now wasted, reached up and wrapped with surprising strength and warmth around my neck. I had always balked at hugging older people, especially ones on their death bed. They were always covered with drool, always smelled bad. I leaned in and gave her a tight hug without hesitation, burying my face in her shoulder. She smelled sweet, as if the antiseptic stench of hospital equipment and pain pills couldn't affect her. When I summoned up the courage to pull back, the pain in her eyes cleared for a moment, and she smiled. Then, what would be her last words to me fell from her lips. "Bye bye, Good nurse." She knew my entrance exam for nursing school was in five days. She knew how desperately I wanted in. So few words. Such rich encouragement. So typical of her.
The next day we got a call from my mother. She had begun spitting out the pain medication we gave her, so hopeful was she that she could convince all of her children to come to her bedside from their scattered locations. It was as if she could bring them to her side through sheer force of will. The Little General would not be denied. At last, with all her children there, she slipped into a coma. For three days she drifted in a world of painless peace.
The life of a college student is cruel. I could not stay and help my mom care for her. I had to go back to my classes. My teachers were kind, but it didn't soothe the pain. I would hide in a friend's apartment between class periods. Only my closest friends were allowed in.
The day before my entrance exam for nursing school, I went to the computer lab to help a computer-illiterate classmate with her paper. We worked for hours, I trying to teach her how to use Word, she trying to keep from destroying the computer. Then my brother walked in. His manner was casual, almost buoyant. He chatted with me for a minute or two, then in an offhand way, dropped an atom bomb on my life.
"Dad said to tell you that Gran Gran went home last night."
Numbness is supposed to accompany news like that. I felt no numbness, only as if something essential had been ripped away from me, that part of the force that made my heart beat had been strangled. Never again would I be able to look at roses or taste coffee or see the little house that she kept her fishing poles in without a stab of pain that shot down into the depths of my soul.
Her last words to me were haunting as I made last minute efforts to study for my nursing school entrance test. "Bye bye, Good nurse." There was a known fact within my family---if she prayed for something, it happened. Period. The thought that she considered my entrance into nursing school important enough to pray about while she was in such intense pain...it humbled me almost to the point of bringing me to my knees.
I took the test. I'll know in a month whether or not I got in, but it doesn't matter now. I did the best I could, and in that I did honor to Emma...my sweet Gran Gran.
The funeral is still poignant in my mind. I was seated, not with my family, but with a row of my cousins, all at least two years younger than I. All the grand and great-grandchildtren were to sing as part of the service. The song was unimportant. The sound was beautiful. Such harmony and love in the voices of so many weeping people. My papaw preached the service---my mom's ex-alcoholic father, Emma's son-in-law. Gran gran lived with him and her daughter for the last decade of her life. He was mellow now, and his booming voice faltered once or twice, but he was determined to carry out the task Gran gran had given him---to preach the Gospel so that two of her grandsons who live in the depths of sin and self-hatred could hear a message of hope and love.
There was no one to hold me, no one to tell me that it was all right to cry. That would have to come later. I did not cry. I had three tender young girls beside me. All of them needed support, right now. The youngest one, with whom I live in constant enmity, asked me to hold her. I would not, could not cry. Not even when my brother, who I have seen cry maybe three or four times in my life, wept softly. I had no rock, but I had to be strong. Just like Gran Gran.
I won't go on about the funeral, nor the days afterward. This mother's day was so difficult. I have lost one of the two people I admire. A hero is gone. The memory is of so little comfort. My mother and her mother are now left shredded. She was their hero too.
Last saturday, the three of us looked through photographs taken of the last week of Gran Gran's life, and of the funeral. There is not one single picture of me with Gran Gran. Heartbreak is not the correct word to describe what I felt, because with this came the realization that I did not have any pictures at all with her. I've bitterly cursed my camera-shy nature many times since then. I can still remember her, though, every time I hear windchimes, smell coffee, listen to the beat of a hummingbird's wings, see the smile on a kid's face, watch an old woman baking.
So many of you have said kind things about my fan fiction. I have been unable to finish it, even though I know exactly how it will conclude. The reason? It is nothing but a fantasy, as insubstantial to me right now as an apparition. Gran Gran was real. Her story is as rock-solid as her character. Maybe one day I'll write it down. Maybe. I doubt it can be put into words. Until then, suffice to say:
Here lies a woman who was stronger than Kara. Her body needed no jeweled adornments. Her skin needed no makeup. Her eyes shone like brilliant stars against the black velvet cloak of midnight. Deserving of so much more than to perish like any other human, that is exactly what she did. Her humble roots live on in we, her family. God have mercy on our bleeding souls, and let us do our best to try to mimic her love, her peace, her happiness, and most of all, her faith.
Emma, my great grandmother, stood at four foot even. By the time I was born, her coal black hair had faded to a dark gray at the neck and snow white on top. She had a stocky build, heavy black eyebrows, and a beautiful nature. She wasn't naturally quiet, neither was she boisterous. Even-tempered and deeply intelligent, she looked life straight in the eye, considered it carefully, and smiled.
It is said that the most beautiful blooms fade soonest. For my Great Grandmother (Tenderly known to me as Gran Gran) this was not so. In her mid-eighties, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That, however, is only the final chapter of a rich story.
Emma was born in Texas, and there lived for the rest of her life. Indian blood, pulled from various tribes and influences, ran strong in her veins. She lived with her father and mother for the first few years of her life. All too soon, though, her mother died in childbirth, leaving her as the headmistress of the house. Her only comfort at the end of a day of back-breaking work was to hear her father whistle as he came home from his job with the railroad. Then, one day, he injured his foot jumping off a train car. Emma remembered dressing it, waiting for it to heal. He was a diabetic, and so quite soon he was in the hospital from the infection.
About this time a man came through town boasting that he had started a "home" for children whose families could not afford them. Thinking it was only a temporary situation, Emma's father sent her and her siblings to live in this home. There they were beaten, starved, and sequestered from the outside world. When Emma's father found out about their treatment, he immediately pulled them out. He called Emma to his hospital room. He said he was sorry, and promised to never send them to a place like that again. A year later, when the organization was shut down, a huge crate was found filled with cards the children had been sent by family. They were never received.
Soon after, Emma's father died. This opened up a newer and infinitely happier chapter in her life. She was sent to an orphanage run by a man of God, Father Buckner. For the rest of her life she talked about Buckner orphanage. It was the middle of the depression, but the children never noticed. Even when they ate oatmeal three meals a day, life was still beautiful. Emma grew up in that orphanage, and until the last two years of her life returned for each reunion.
Emma married Leo. He had a happy-go-lucky personality to match her even keel. He called himself "The old Irishman." My gran gran he called "The little general." The name was apt, but she disliked it. With Leo she had five children, and because of them developed what became known as "The Look." One day I asked her to demonstrate it. Without batting an eyelash her tempered face turned into a heavy black thundercloud. I was sure the furies of a thousand hells had fallen upon me. I wilted, slid under the table, and hid. When I poked my head back out, her expression had changed to the normal, easygoing Gran gran that I was used to. I never asked her to show me The Look again.
Emma and Leo raised their children. Though each of them chose their own roads, sometimes roads that their parents strongly disapproved of, their love, prayers, and support never left them. Such is a mother's duty and privilege, one that Emma exercised with a grace that was innate to her.
Each of the grandchildren have said that Emma and Leo always made them feel especially loved, elevated above the cruel mob. However, there was one that I am sure they had a special tenderness for...that one was my mother. During the first part of her life, when times were difficult for her and life was unkind, Granny and Grandpa were always there for her. When home life with her drunken father became too much, they would rescue her, put her in the car, and ask her where she wanted to go. These road trips are now some of her best memories. Later, when my mother was in nursing school, so often she wanted to give up. Her Granny and Grandpa wouldn't hear of it. Today she credits them with the full nursing career she has led.
When Leo died, Emma still smiled tenderly at life. Just before he became sick, I was born. Just as my brother, with his dark hair, dark eyes, and deep tan skin, was almost a photocopy of her, so was I a photocopy of Leo. From him I recieved the gift of reddish-gold hair, fair skin, and eyes that turn brilliant green when I get angry.
My gran gran had a unique character. She excelled at being happy---not just joyful, but happy. She was thoughtful, but not reticient, a homebody, but not a recluse. And how she loved to fish. She could always pick the best spot, pull up the biggest fish, and just smile happily.
Gran gran could see the beauty in everyone and everything. Her little home was a reflection of that---everything in it shone with her love. She lived for visits from her family.
Then, as it has with so many people, one word changed everything, brought our world crashing down around us. Cancer. A tumor had invaded her body, OUR Gran Gran's precious little body, the casing for the jewel that was Emma Atkinson. It originated in her abdomen and wrapped itself around her aorta. Sickening tendrils of cancerous tissue sank into her spine, causing pain that stole her will to breathe. For the last four months of her life, she was on pain medication that would have put a normal person twice her size into a coma, yet with her tiny stature it barely tamed the agony. Our sweet Emma.
Chemo failed. Radiation failed. Prayers were met with a simple answer: No. Still she trusted in her Father. The only time she rested was when she listened to praise and worship tapes, or when the Bible was being read to her. How she wanted to go home!
I remember the night I stayed with her, helped my mom take care of her. She had to be kept on her left side to keep the tumor from choking off her spinal cord. I gave her medication, held water for her to sip, helped give her a sponge bath, helped change her diapers. Morning came, and I had to go. Just before I left, I leaned over the bed railing to give her a hug. Her arm, always covered with a healthy layer of flesh, now wasted, reached up and wrapped with surprising strength and warmth around my neck. I had always balked at hugging older people, especially ones on their death bed. They were always covered with drool, always smelled bad. I leaned in and gave her a tight hug without hesitation, burying my face in her shoulder. She smelled sweet, as if the antiseptic stench of hospital equipment and pain pills couldn't affect her. When I summoned up the courage to pull back, the pain in her eyes cleared for a moment, and she smiled. Then, what would be her last words to me fell from her lips. "Bye bye, Good nurse." She knew my entrance exam for nursing school was in five days. She knew how desperately I wanted in. So few words. Such rich encouragement. So typical of her.
The next day we got a call from my mother. She had begun spitting out the pain medication we gave her, so hopeful was she that she could convince all of her children to come to her bedside from their scattered locations. It was as if she could bring them to her side through sheer force of will. The Little General would not be denied. At last, with all her children there, she slipped into a coma. For three days she drifted in a world of painless peace.
The life of a college student is cruel. I could not stay and help my mom care for her. I had to go back to my classes. My teachers were kind, but it didn't soothe the pain. I would hide in a friend's apartment between class periods. Only my closest friends were allowed in.
The day before my entrance exam for nursing school, I went to the computer lab to help a computer-illiterate classmate with her paper. We worked for hours, I trying to teach her how to use Word, she trying to keep from destroying the computer. Then my brother walked in. His manner was casual, almost buoyant. He chatted with me for a minute or two, then in an offhand way, dropped an atom bomb on my life.
"Dad said to tell you that Gran Gran went home last night."
Numbness is supposed to accompany news like that. I felt no numbness, only as if something essential had been ripped away from me, that part of the force that made my heart beat had been strangled. Never again would I be able to look at roses or taste coffee or see the little house that she kept her fishing poles in without a stab of pain that shot down into the depths of my soul.
Her last words to me were haunting as I made last minute efforts to study for my nursing school entrance test. "Bye bye, Good nurse." There was a known fact within my family---if she prayed for something, it happened. Period. The thought that she considered my entrance into nursing school important enough to pray about while she was in such intense pain...it humbled me almost to the point of bringing me to my knees.
I took the test. I'll know in a month whether or not I got in, but it doesn't matter now. I did the best I could, and in that I did honor to Emma...my sweet Gran Gran.
The funeral is still poignant in my mind. I was seated, not with my family, but with a row of my cousins, all at least two years younger than I. All the grand and great-grandchildtren were to sing as part of the service. The song was unimportant. The sound was beautiful. Such harmony and love in the voices of so many weeping people. My papaw preached the service---my mom's ex-alcoholic father, Emma's son-in-law. Gran gran lived with him and her daughter for the last decade of her life. He was mellow now, and his booming voice faltered once or twice, but he was determined to carry out the task Gran gran had given him---to preach the Gospel so that two of her grandsons who live in the depths of sin and self-hatred could hear a message of hope and love.
There was no one to hold me, no one to tell me that it was all right to cry. That would have to come later. I did not cry. I had three tender young girls beside me. All of them needed support, right now. The youngest one, with whom I live in constant enmity, asked me to hold her. I would not, could not cry. Not even when my brother, who I have seen cry maybe three or four times in my life, wept softly. I had no rock, but I had to be strong. Just like Gran Gran.
I won't go on about the funeral, nor the days afterward. This mother's day was so difficult. I have lost one of the two people I admire. A hero is gone. The memory is of so little comfort. My mother and her mother are now left shredded. She was their hero too.
Last saturday, the three of us looked through photographs taken of the last week of Gran Gran's life, and of the funeral. There is not one single picture of me with Gran Gran. Heartbreak is not the correct word to describe what I felt, because with this came the realization that I did not have any pictures at all with her. I've bitterly cursed my camera-shy nature many times since then. I can still remember her, though, every time I hear windchimes, smell coffee, listen to the beat of a hummingbird's wings, see the smile on a kid's face, watch an old woman baking.
So many of you have said kind things about my fan fiction. I have been unable to finish it, even though I know exactly how it will conclude. The reason? It is nothing but a fantasy, as insubstantial to me right now as an apparition. Gran Gran was real. Her story is as rock-solid as her character. Maybe one day I'll write it down. Maybe. I doubt it can be put into words. Until then, suffice to say:
Here lies a woman who was stronger than Kara. Her body needed no jeweled adornments. Her skin needed no makeup. Her eyes shone like brilliant stars against the black velvet cloak of midnight. Deserving of so much more than to perish like any other human, that is exactly what she did. Her humble roots live on in we, her family. God have mercy on our bleeding souls, and let us do our best to try to mimic her love, her peace, her happiness, and most of all, her faith.