On nights when I would sleep over at her house and we were alone she always expressed a large interest in my thoughts and my ideas about my future. She often talked about the old days with me and encouraged me to draw more, learn more, and talk more. She also inadvertently encouraged me to spend more time with Buddy, because she often went to bed really early. On those nights I would go out and sit in the family room with him and we would cook up pranks to pull on her, talk more about the old days, eat club crackers and drink Coca Cola out of a wine glass. One night Buddy and I even developed a little skit by using a couple of canes that they had lying around the house, along with his hats and a record (I believe) of Frank Sinatra singing: "I did it my way." A sight to behold I am sure - a sight that made her grin from ear to ear - laughing and clapping.
My sister and I were the only grandchildren on Mom's side of the family and we were spoiled a little because of that. But what is most important is that we were brought up with a great amount of love. There were so many people all around us that wanted to make sure that we had good lives. There is six years difference between Shannon's and my age and we really never competed against each other for anything and certainly not love. We grew up fast when I think about it and I doubt we thought much about how lucky we were then. I was in the 6th grade the year that she graduated and left home to go to Western Kentucky University. I know it was an exciting time for her but it was also a sad time for me…I think we were all a little sad. On her last day in town we went around to all the relatives houses so that she could say good byes, and our last stop was Nannie and Buddy's. Nannie cried from the time we got there until the time we left, and as we were walking to the car the two of them were still crying. A year later she was gone too.
Only gone in a different way - a way that I had not been accustomed to - she was really gone - not coming back gone. On an ordinary fall evening, Mom and Dad were moving about in the kitchen cooking dinner just like clockwork and the phone rang. Oddly, it wasn't Nannie making her routine call while Mom and Dad were cooking dinner - I don't even know who it was. I just remember Dad saying I'll take care of this you just go. I didn't know what was happening I just followed Mom, got into the car and headed across town. I guess Dad turned off all the things on the stove and hurried over himself - if he hadn't been there we might have just left it all turned on. The rest of the story is quite sad, but a peaceful sort of sadness, and with all due respect I will leave it at that. Nannie died on November 1, 1995, she was sixty eight years old.
My Uncle Bill a few years earlier had just completed an assignment in Jamaica and had accepted duties that would be carried out in Bratislava, Slovakia in the near future. The two of them were already in language classes that would help them abide in that culture for a few years. Mom's first phone call was to her sister and she was en route to Dawson Springs immediately.
Softly and tenderly she had slipped the bonds of this earth - just like that. Friends began to call, as they say, and the house was soon filled with women with casseroles, meat loafs and fried chicken. Family members were called and arrangements were made and then, as we have many times since, we gathered in the blue chapel at Beshear Funeral Home to grieve. It was somber, it was gut wrenching, it was scary and it shouldn't have been so bad at fifteen. Maybe I was ill prepared but the feeling that I felt on those days has been surpassed very few times. So few that I am reluctant to go into it here, at least not any farther than this.
I think that it might have been the first time in my life that I had seen so many adults crying. Grown men and women that were members of my family that had always seemed to have it together, but they were crying. People coming in and out saying kind things, sharing stories, feeling sad, all those things took place too. I remember my Mom, so stoic, so solid, she and Trisha greeted guest and shook hands while Buddy, Dad and my Uncle Bill created a separate wall of hand shaking and greeting themselves. I don't really know what they were all thinking, I had no way of knowing rather than asking and even that I put off for another day. Nannie joined my Grandfather Decola Franklin at Rosedale Cemetery.
Days turned into months, months blended into years, and before we knew it so many things happened to us all. A phrase that I like to borrow says it best: life happened to us. She would have been proud to see us gather for holidays for many years in her living room with Buddy at the helm, a man who would often mention her name and lend me many stories that have helped to fill these lines. A man who changed my life through his love, generosity, and confidence in me over the years. He would leave their home just as she had left it and for many years until his death she was ever present at the house at 600 Russell Street. Buddy passed away in 2002 and was buried next to his Grandfather on his mother's side, T. C. Cash, in Ausenbaugh Cemetery, just outside of Dawson Springs.
Bill and Trisha would go on to serve the Foreign Service in Bratislava, Slovakia. I was lucky enough to visit Bratislava with Mom in those years, among other places in Eastern Europe. Their careers, travels and life in general would be a breath of fresh air in ours and as I have said before, they helped to make the world a bit smaller for all of us. During the final years of Nannie's life Trisha completed her PhD, graciously mentioned in the introduction of her dissertation is the acknowledgement of a loving and supportive mother. My Aunt and Uncle still reside in Washington, D.C. and have both recently retired respectively; Bill from the State Department and Trisha from the Foreign Service Institute.
Just as much as she would have enjoyed being a Great-Grandmother, Nannie would have loved to see my Mom and Dad fill the rolls of Nana and Poppy. The year after her death my sister married Steven Parker in a ceremony at the First Baptist Church, a celebration that Nannie would have so enjoyed. Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue - the day was a beautiful day and Nannie would have shined to see my sister look so beautiful.
Of course there have been so many things that have happened to me over the past fifteen years as well…but there is no great need to go into all that here. Life has happened to me in the best ways more than the worst. I suppose that above all with all things considered, the greatest gifts both sides of grandparents gave me were my parents. Parents that have loved me no matter what steps I have made, what jobs I have chosen to take, or what places I have decided to move. Lots of love. I suppose that is what brought this entire piece of wordage together…love. When my Grandfather Buddy passed away I was fortunate enough to inherit a few pieces of furniture that have made their way to Texas with me. Every day when I enter my home here in Austin, these things remind me of their steadfast presence in my life.
In going back through her life, producing a sort of meaty timeline, I have questioned myself many times as to what my purpose has been. I have often wondered if it was really okay for me to expose someone in this way when they really have no choice in telling me to keep going or to stop. All through this process I knew that this was something that I always wanted to do. You see, this process has had more to do with me than it did with her. Nannie, a title that she chose and wore well - a loving wife and a dear mother, did things for me and my sister that only we can describe. She was beautiful - inside and out and to borrow a phrase from my dear Aunt Ami, "she had a heart as big as all outdoors."
At Beshear Funeral Home and then on out to Rosedale Cemetery, on that dreary November day, we all said good bye to her. Knowing not what the future would hold for our family without her. Without her love, her laugh, her generosity and her grace. I am sure we all wondered deep within our thoughts about how the structure of our family would change, and it surely did. But she achieved something that every person that lives on this earth does not have the power to achieve - she kept going. Her smile is present at every Christmas dinner that our family has shared since then on the faces of her two daughters. Stories of her have been brought up time and time again, and I suppose that so long as I am able to speak and write those stories will continue.
She walked a line that was so fine - I think that she was the only one that could see it. Her strength outweighed her weaknesses and she tackled life with a distinct class and grace that I have yet to see perfected so well since. "Her heart was as big as all out doors," and there was nothing that she would not give or do to make the lives of those around her richer and better. And over the fifteen years that I had the honor of knowing her she captivated me and has held my attention long after her death.
In an old reel to reel film that belonged to my Uncle Gar and Aunt Ami, a film that I have watched over and over again. There is a portion backed with music to the melody of the song "Memories." In this particular film she is getting out of her car at the mines in one of her trench coats, hat and gloves to match. She starts toward Gar and Ami who had been babysitting my Mom there at the mines. Mom was probably around three years old and she too had on a long coat with a high button - a beautiful little girl dressed in late fifties fashion. When she realized that her mother was there the biggest smile came across her delicate little face and she ran and jumped into her arms. Nannie spun around with her little girl in her arms and the scene closes out with her holding her tight…clinging to her little girl and smiling. A smile that I can see to this day, a smile that could warm the coldest day and raise the lowest spirits. A smile that I knew all too well and knew not how to deal with its absence.
Fifteen years has passed since she went away - years that have seen our family well. Nannie would be proud to know that we are all doing fine. If it is possible I hope she has gotten glimpses of her two beautiful Great Grandchildren: Cole and Sloane Parker. These two would have been the light of her life, I know they have been the light of ours. She would have smiled over her daughters and their husbands as they have followed life's path so graciously and kindly just as she did. And if she can read these words and feel my feelings as they pour on to this screen I hope that she knows that did do this for her too…not all for me. I guess it is the selfish little boy inside me that needed to get all of this off my chest. I needed the world to know that I had this grandmother that was so great, because I lost her so early. So as I turn this page in my mind and soon I will get up from this seat and turn off this device, go over and curl up on her sofa and read someone else's narratives - I hope she knows that I am fine too now. And in so many ways I hold her responsible. She and a score of other people who loved me often more than I deserved over the years. Life is what it is and we all know that we can't live forever. The ones that are lucky, find out what matters to them far before those things or people are gone. We grow to learn that life is a journey of reaching a certain understanding and just as you think you are getting everything figured out an obstacle arises that may have never occurred to you.
I have grown to feel a deep responsibility to my family and to go even farther to its history. I have felt compelled for several years to write about such thoughts and especially about the great people that I have known. The people that changed my life. Nannie was one of those people, one of those dear, sweet, people that devoted part of her life to mine. That matters. Fifteen years of memories and fifteen years since and I am still talking about her. But what still amazes me, after all these years of inquisitive talking, is that I always find another person that she has influenced or touched - lives she changed just by living. So now it's done, the only way I knew how to do it, and with misty eyes I will post this blog of many sorts onto the world wide web. On to this web with many messages in one but one that I must add just in case she sees it: Thank you.
Many, many, years ago, in a little community called Menser, just outside of Dawson Springs, Kentucky, a little girl was born, and they named her Brunette. She was my grandmother.
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