Howdy folks! I hope y'alls Friday is as relaxed as mine.
Work is sure quiet today and with that quiet comes a lot of extra brain activity on my part.
My mind has roamed from looking for baby gifts for my cousin to the weather to photography to poetry, to Texas history, and then to my great grandmother who had taken a turn for the worse and was expected to pass away 6 days ago, but today is wearing a smile and drinking apple juice.
97 glorious years on this earth! Can you imagine? I've talked a little about her before on here, (Hands). She is an incredible woman with personality to spare. She is/was what you might call a spit fire. If she had an opinion, which she usually did, she shared it.
Beulah O'Dell. A name meaning beautiful and that she is. I think myself quite lucky to be 25 years old and still have a great-grandparent alive. She has really shown me a lot about strength and will power. After she fell and went in to the nursing home several years ago, she refused to think she was staying there. She was always going to go HOME. I always thought it was her way of refusing to let her surroundings control her or imprison her.
My great-grandaddy Lowe passed away in 1992. I was only 7 or 8 years old, but I remember his kind hearted laugh and his ever present smile. I remember him singing and o how I loved his record collection! He was a fine musician and enjoyed lifting others spirits with good old gospel tunes. He played checkers and chess for enjoyment. He was teaching my big sister, Wendy, how to play before he passed away. He was a happy soul.
He and Great-grandmother were quite the pair. I always thought they fit quite well, balancing each other out. I was too young to truly know Great-grandaddy, but I felt loved by him each time I saw him.
They always had such a beautiful yard, Grandmother prided herself in it. They even won yard of the week in the Post Dispatch a few times. She had beautiful rose bushes growing on the side of the hill their house sits on, just on the edge of town, and she always cut us some roses before we headed home from a visit.
There were bluebonnets in her yard too. Last summer, I went to take a few pictures of them. None of the pictures turned out very good, but I'm glad I did it because they are gone now.
Great-grandmother talks about working in the fields, picking cotton with my Pa hanging on to her sack as she walked the fields. She use to work in the cafeteria at the school, then spend her evening on the tractor helping Great-grandaddy farm.
They made a life for themselves out of nothing. They started out in old farmhouses, farming someone else's land with someone else's crop in the ground and by the time Great-grandaddy retired from farming, he had become a very successful farmer on his own with a strong supportive wife and two fine, strong handsome sons to his name. He and his brother rocked the house they lived in and Great-grandmother is SO proud of that house. It was always white-glove approved. Not a thing out of place, not a speck of dirt. I remember being afraid to touch anything in her house because I knew she'd be able to tell!
These two people - one still hanging on and one loving us from above - have made quite an impact on my life. Such strength and devotion. I've learned many things from them. But out of all the things I've learned, whether they be ways I don't want to be or characteristics I strive to be more like, one stands out as key.
LOVE. Love for God, love for your spouse, love for family. Whether it be shown by hugs and kisses and words or whether it not be shown too well at all. It is above all - IMPORTANT.
I know my Greatgrandmother will soon join her husband in the sweet Beulah land and she is very much deserving of a life free of pain, a life where her once strong hands will become ungnarled and regain their youthful appearance and capabilities. Where her knees and her hips aren't sources of pain and discomfort. Yes, she is deserving of such a Heavenly life!
God Bless Y'all!
Peace, Love & Memories,
WHIT
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