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| Eva Alma Parham |
On August 17, 1996, when I was eighteen years old, I experienced my first significant loss of a family member. I say "significant," not because any losses before this were inconsequential, but because up to this point in my life, I had never really lost someone close to me. My great-grandmother, "Grandma Bobo" (Annie Mae Jones Parham Bobo), had passed away in 1990 when I was in middle school, but she had lived in Georgia and my family had never been particularly close with her. We had visited her a few times, and she had visited us a few times, but she wasn't a significant presence in my life. There were also a few great-aunts and great-uncles, and one great-grandfather, that had passed away throughout my childhood, but again - no one who had been present in my life on a regular basis.
But this. This was SIGNIFICANT.
I had just moved into my college dorm room the day before. It was the start of my sophomore year at Winthrop University, and I had spent the entire day working with the Baptist Student Union to help freshmen students move in. Two full days of hauling televisions, boxes, loft beds and suitcases up several flights of dormitory stairs in the August heat of South Carolina. I was EXHAUSTED. But I was also excited because I had plans to go to a concert that night with several of my friends. I had retired to my room to shower and get dressed, and I was almost ready to leave to meet up with my friends when someone knocked on my door. I looked out the peep hole and saw my mom and her parents - my Grandma and PaPa Foster. What in the world?!? What are they doing here? Don't they know I'm about to go out? Something is wrong.
My first thought was that something had happened to my great-grandmother, Ruth Garrett. Grandma Garrett had just turned 87 years old in July, and her health had been fading. It didn't otherwise make sense to me that my grandparents had made the 2-hour drive from Greenville to Rock Hill to see me, unannounced. Looking back on it now, I realize that it didn't make sense at all that my grandmother would have traveled that far to tell me that her mother had passed away - I'm sure she would have had more important immediate needs to attend to, let alone the emotions she would have been dealing with. But this was the thought process that went through my mind - all within the time that it took me to turn the doorknob and open the door.
I said hi, gave hugs and welcomed them in to my room. I may have even mentioned that I was about to leave. But the serious look on my mom's face told me that something was going on. I don't remember her exact words to me, but I'm sure they were something to the effect of "Melanie, we came to take you home. Your Grandma Eva passed away this morning."
The rest of that day is a bit of a blur that I remember only in snapshots. I remember wearing the denim dress that I had put on for the concert and hugging my teddy bear - the one with the giant feet that my high school best friend had given me for my birthday. I remember sitting on my dorm room bed crying, my mom sitting beside me with her arm around me. I remember staring out the window of the car on the drive home, still hugging that teddy bear, my mom sitting in the back seat with me while my grandfather drove. I remember pulling into my parents' driveway and my dad meeting us in the yard, grabbing me and hugging me. I remember sitting in my grandparents' living room - in the very chair where she passed - while my mom and Granddaddy sat at the kitchen table talking. I remember my Aunt Cynthia finally arriving after a friend drove her down from her home in Graham, North Carolina - she nearly fell out of the car and stumbled across the front yard, practically falling into my dad's arms. I remember that my mom had rearranged the furniture in her living room sometime between my departure the day before and my sudden re-arrival - and I. did. not. like. it. It didn't feel like home. Nothing felt the same anymore.
Most of all, I remember the intense disbelief - I had just seen my Grandma the day before! She couldn't possibly be dead! My grandparents had lived next door to me for almost my entire life, and I saw them every day. She had come outside in the driveway in her nightgown to see me off early on the morning of the 16th while we were loading up the rented cargo van to move me out. I had told her I loved her, playfully fussed at her for coming out in her nightgown, and told her to go back inside. Little did I know, it would be the last time I would ever see her.
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| Grandma Eva and me, c. 1978 |
My Grandma Eva seemed to be made of titanium (and I think some parts of her actually were). She was one heck of a tough lady. She lived most of her life in intense pain from rheumatoid arthritis. She had endured multiple joint replacements - both knees and a wrist, and her hands were twisted and gnarled from the arthritis. She wore leather, laced-up braces on her wrists for as long as I could remember. She walked slowly, in a shuffle, because she had trouble bending her knees. She was a beloved cafeteria lady at the local middle school, but had been forced into early retirement due to her limited mobility. But she never complained. NEVER. She had more of a right to feel sorry for herself than anyone I have ever known - for more reasons than I was even aware of at the time - but she never, ever did. She did her best not to let her limitations keep her from enjoying life and doing the things that she wanted to do. Perhaps it's the passage of time blurring my memories, but even when she had a heart attack a few years prior to her death, I don't remember much changing once she had fully recovered. She hosted "Sunday dinner" at her house every Sunday after church. She and my mom split the cooking duties, but we always had to have Grandma Eva's macaroni and cheese and fried okra. She was an avid Atlanta Braves fan, and she and my Granddaddy took my sister and me to several games. They would travel with the senior group from church, and even took a trip once to Disney World. I visited Nashville, Tennessee with them several times while my Aunt Cynthia was in graduate school there. Every Christmas, Grandma would go on a cooking spree - making candies, "peanut butter crunch" and fudge for us to enjoy. She simply insisted on doing what she wanted, when and how she wanted, as much as she possibly could.
On the morning of August 17, 1996, my Grandma Eva and my Granddaddy had gotten up and gone through their normal Saturday morning routine. My Granddad went to meet his buddies for coffee at the local Krispy Kreme and then to walk laps around the local mall, the way he had every Saturday morning for years. My dad had gone in to wrap up some paperwork in the office at the exterminating company where he had worked for many years, and where my Granddad had worked before him. My parents were a one-car family, so my mom had driven him to the office that morning and then come back home. My mom and my 13-year-old sister were in our house, cleaning and rearranging furniture. My Aunt Sharon and cousin Jill had just left after a brief visit, and my mom and sister had made plans to meet them for lunch later. When a dear church friend, Laura Daugherty, stopped by my grandparents' house to visit and deliver some vegetables from her garden and couldn't get anyone to come to the door after several tries, she went next door to speak to my mother. The two of them walked across the yard to my grandparents' house and could see through the window where my Grandma was sitting in her normal spot in her chair in the living room. The front door was locked. From the angle where they were looking through the window, her legs were all that could be seen. My grandmother took medication to help her sleep at night, so they assumed that she had fallen asleep in her chair and wasn't waking up to the knocking on the door. My Granddaddy was unreachable - this was in the days prior to anyone and everyone carrying a cell phone. My mom didn't have a key to my grandparents' house, but my dad did. My mom and sister quickly drove to the office and told my dad he had to come home immediately. When they arrived back home and my dad unlocked the door, my younger sister ran into the house before anyone could stop her. There, she found my Grandma, slumped in her chair with her nitroglycerin pills spilled in her lap. She was gone, having died suddenly at age 68 from her second heart attack.
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When I came home for Christmas break the following December, we went as a family to place flowers on my Grandma's grave. As we were getting back in the car at the cemetery, my dad mumbled something to my mom about "where the baby is buried down in Georgia."
"What baby?" I asked from the back seat.
"Your Grandma's baby."
"Grandma's baby? I didn't know she had another baby besides you and Aunt Cynthia. Was this after Cynthia was born?"
"No, this was the baby she had with her first husband."
"FIRST husband?!?"
"Yes. Your Grandma was married before your Granddaddy. She had a baby that got very sick and eventually died when she couldn't get anyone to help her. She was alone because her husband had left her."
Say WHAT?!?!?!?
Apparently, I still had a lot to learn about my Grandma Eva.
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