Family Hall of Fame - Meema

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my Meema to put on this post. She has been in the nursing home for about 4 years now and somehow when you are in that situation it is not conducive to picture taking.

My meema was the nicest lady ever. Her main mission in life was to feed everyone to the point that they were miserable. She always cooked huge breakfasts. I remember as a kid she would put a puddle of gravy on my plate and tear up little bite sized pieces of biscuit in the puddle so I could eat them with my fingers. She would also melt big blobs of cheese in her skillet and just give us a big blob of melted gooey cheese with our breakfast. She always had cokes and kept milky way bars in the fridge. When I was in high school, sometimes I would call her if I didn't like what was in the cafeteria and she would make me a lunch that would feed five people.

Meema was a big worry wart. She worried about all kinds of obscure things. Once she told me that I shouldn't lay out in the sun because a rattlesnake might crawl up and bite me. Another piece of wisdom that she passed along was that I should always keep a quarter in my shoe so if I needed to call someone for help I would have money for the pay phone.

Meema always used the name brand of everything. Her pantry was well stocked with TIDE and CHARMIN and pretty much everything you could think of. When I first got married,we were so broke. We would go spend the weekends with Meema and she would send us home with grocery bags full of extra JIFF peanut butter and other supplies that she just happened to have extras of.

Another funny thing is that she was the worst photographer ever. Somehow she always managed to cut off people heads. She could never remember from one time to the next how to use her camera and always assumed that her batteries (which she pronounced Bat Trees) were bad. Years later she got as deaf as could be. She always resisted wearing her hearing aids. When she would wear them they would beep relentlessly. It was this high pitched squeal that I guess she couldn't hear, but it drove everyone else up the wall. Her deaf period was very difficult for me. It just goes against my nature to SCREAM at my grandmother. As a result I sat around her quietly, smiling and patting her hand.

A few years ago Meema broke her hip. As soon as that happened she began to go downhill and never really recovered from it. Her mind is completely gone now and she doesn't remember who any of us are. Although she is still here physically it is like she died a long time ago. I miss her. Her personality has changed a lot. Now she will blurt out just about any random thing. One of the last times I saw her she said that my fingernails were ugly and she hated the shoes I bought her. She also wanted to let me know that Landry who was about 5 at the time had hitchhiked to her house. (!??!) I didn't take it personally because it is not her talking.

What is sad is that my Meema lived a good life. She was a good mother and grandmother and she loved Landry to pieces. Now she sits in a tiny room staring at four walls and waits to die. Luckily, in her mind she is a young girl and lots of the people she has loved and lost are now with her again. She doesn't seem unhappy but you have to wonder. I hate it and I wish she could go to heaven so she could have some peace.