someone has to remember this stuff

This one comes under the category of sometimes this shit just writes itself. Mom and I went to visit Grammy this weekend, since we both had a long weekend. She'll just be talking about random stuff, like the weather or the neighbors, and all of a sudden, ka-THUNK, this family history starts pouring out.

This stuff mostly came right out of Grammy's mouth, and where I can remember what she said almost exactly, I put it in quotation marks. She was talking about Grandpa to Mom. (I was wheeling myself around in the old wheelchair in the hall while eavesdropping, because I didn't want to interrupt the flow.) She didn't call him "Snead," the way she does a lot now. She mostly called him Wilbur.

Talking about Billy dying. He was Grandpa's younger brother, and he died of mouth cancer, because he smoked(?) and chewed tobacco: "When Billy died, it (just about) broke his (Wilbur's -- Grandpa's) heart. (Or "It just about broke his heart when Billy died.") He didn't care much (much care) for his sister (my note: his sister was Irene -- she's the one I'm built like), but he loved his brother."

Billy and Irene were sent away to an orphanage when they were young (because the family was so poor). Wilbur was the oldest. He was too old (to go to the orphanage, I guess) -- he was 12. Billy and Irene got better (or maybe any at all) schooling -- Irene became a nurse, and Billy (I missed this part -- I think he had the opportunity to get more/better schooling, but maybe he didn't -- didn't want to?). "I don't (guess/suppose) they have those anymore -- orphanages." "Of course, I didn't know him (them) then."

She didn't talk about the other brother this time, but there was another brother -- the youngest? I think his name was Buddy, but I'm not sure. I think he was sent away, too. To California? No one really knows/knew anything about him, I guess.

For a long time no one knew what Grandpa had. They finally diagnosed him (at the Mayo clinic?) -- it was something like TB-4, but not. (I have googled the crap out of this, I have no idea what it was.) It was actually his heart that killed him. The doctor was "disappointed" (that was Grammy's word -- disappointed) when he died, because it had seemed like the medicine/treatment was making some improvement. He asked Grammy for some juice, but they didn't have any juice in the house, because they never drank it. So she asked him if he wanted a soda. She brought him a soda, and then she went to check on supper in the oven (macaroni and cheese, maybe? She said what it was, but I forget). Then she went to check on him, and he had just died. Sometime between drinking the soda and her coming back to check on him, he just died. (I think it's so weird that he didn't make any noise, or call out or anything. Then again, I suppose Grandpa in Connecticut didn't either, and he died at home in his armchair.)

I moved the the wheelchair that's been sitting in the living room since Grammy was in the hospital back down to the basement, but first I wheeled myself around in it for a bit. When she got it for Grandpa, she got the lightest one she could. She knows it's not that heavy, because she used to carry it up and down the steps herself. (Grandpa died 20 years ago last... October? fall, anyway, so Grammy would have been 72 then. Carrying a wheelchair up and down the basement steps. And I'm sure she's done it since then. Over the weekend she got out the stepstool to put a bowl away in the cabinet, and I told her she Wasn't Supposed To Do That, and she said it didn't really count as climbing up on something, because it wasn't that high, and anyway, she had the counter to hold on to. To be fair to her, she seemed pretty steady. She said Mike said she was "stubborn." And I was like, well, yeah.) Mom asked how she got the wheelchair (with Grandpa in it!) out of the house when she took Grandpa to the doctor or the hospital (because there's no door without steps), and she said she just held onto the back of it and let it bump down the steps. She's lent the wheelchair to other people since then (most recently Bob, the guy who mows the lawn, when he had his foot surgery -- that was when he fixed her sewing machine and Irene's old sewing machine, because his wife, Shirley, wanted stuff to keep him busy while he was home), when they needed it. The church asked if they could have it, and she said no, but she'd lend it to anyone who needed it temporarily.

What I remember about Grandpa being sick was being sent back to the bedroom to see if he was done with his glass, and to see if he wanted anything else. I think he was pretty cheerful, but I was totally terrified. (He had missing fingers. I was scared of him anyway. The fact that he was sick just made it worse.) And Grammy gave him milkshakes with raw eggs to keep up his strength, because he was so weak. That's why he needed the wheelchair -- it wasn't that there was anything wrong with his legs, he was just too weak.

The other story Grammy told me that I have to write down before I forget isn't really a story, it's just a memory. She didn't tell me this last weekend, but she's told me a few times before. She and her mama took a trip to visit her mother's parents, I think -- up the mountain. It must have been in Virginia. Now you could make the trip in a car in a few hours, but then I think it was a two-day trip. First they took a train, and then her mama's daddy -- her grandpa -- met them at the train with a wagon. She doesn't remember most of the trip, but what she remembers is that they stopped partway to have something to eat. Well, they must have had something to eat, too, but the part she remembers is the old black coffeepot over the fire. More an image than a memory, really.

Like how I remember the morning my sister was born, when I was two, eating cereal at the kitchen table with someone there taking care of me, or visiting her in the hospital and putting on the little hospital gown.

The end.