Grandma Betty

Grandma Betty and me
Christmas 1977

I have struggled a lot with how to start this blog post.  First, I realize it has been over two years since I have written a post.  Since my last post about my maternal grandfather's death, the world has completely turned upside down - in more ways than one.  Because of the pandemic, I am now primarily working from home, and I have been relocated by the law firm where I work from their Spartanburg office to their Greenville office.  This means that on days when I do have to go into the office, my commute is now about 20-25 minutes versus the 35-40 minutes that it was for almost nine years.  That extra 10-15 minutes makes a huge difference!

But even more recently, the life of every single member of the Foster side of my family was rocked to the core when we - somewhat suddenly - lost our matriarch, my Grandma Betty, on March 9, 2022.  My last living grandparent is now gone.

When I was just five years old in March 1983, my parents brought my baby sister home from the hospital. My dad got out of the car and carried my newborn sister in his arms, wrapped in a pink blanket.  In my mom's arms, also wrapped in a pink blanket, was a newborn-style baby doll, handmade especially for me by my Grandma Betty.  My Grandma wanted to make sure that I didn't feel left out when the new baby came home.  When my mom fed the baby, I fed my baby doll.  When my mom rocked the baby, I rocked my baby doll.  I believe she even had little tiny diapers that I could change when my mom had to change my baby sister.

Having been born in late 1977, I was most definitely a child of the '80s.  In the early to mid-1980s, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were All. The. Rage.  Saturday morning cartoons were interspersed with commercials telling every young girl that she just HAD to have one.  However, my parents were a young couple with two very young girls, and Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were expensive.  Again, not wanting me to be left out, my grandma made me my own homemade "Cabbage Patch" doll with long yellow yarn for hair, pulled up in a ponytail with a braid around the base.  She wore a yellow dress with a sheer fabric overlay with tiny white polka-dots.  She had dimples on her chin, knees and elbows, and little individual fingers and toes.  She even had a little sewn-on belly button and a butt crack!  I did eventually get my Cabbage Patch Kid doll - in fact, I eventually had about 4 or 5 of them.  But I no longer own those dolls.  Yet today, at 44 years old, I still own - and treasure - that homemade doll with the yellow yarn for hair.

Handmade "cabbage patch" doll
Made by Betty Foster

Grandma Betty became "Grandma" Betty with my birth in September 1977, when she was only 44 years old - the same age I am now.  I obviously never knew her as anything but a grandmother, but it seemed to me that she was born for that role.  She loved her six granddaughters and five grandsons fiercely, and we absolutely adored her.  She always - ALWAYS - had a cake or cookies or some other form of sweet treat in a jar or platter on her kitchen counter, and her grandkids knew that we were welcome to help ourselves any time we wanted.  She made the BEST macaroni and cheese ON THE PLANET (don't even try to argue with me on this), and despite years of trying to duplicate it with her exact instructions, I never could.  At least, not until I purchased the ingredients and went to her house and had her make it herself in front of me while I took detailed notes.  Now I am one of only 2-3 people who can make it exactly like hers.

Sleepovers at Grandma and Pa-Pa's house were the best.  When I was young and my Pa-Pa was still working as a carpenter, he would come home from work, bathe, and then we would all sit down for supper to enjoy one of Grandma's amazing home-cooked meals.  During the day, Grandma worked as a seamstress out of their house.  If she was keeping one of us grandkids, we would play in the floor of her sewing room while she worked, or take her huge cookie tin full of buttons, or the OTHER huge cookie tin full of crayons, and go in the living room to make various masterpieces.  And inevitably, before the day was done, she would somehow find time to make something for us - whether it was a dress-up outfit, a new dress for one of our dolls, a blanket, or a new outfit for us to wear.

My husband Mathew and I on our wedding day,
wrapped in the quilt Grandma Betty gave me as a wedding gift.

Grandma could make absolutely anything with a sewing machine.  My sister and I each got a handmade quilt from her as a wedding gift, and most of her grandchildren got at least one quilt for some occasion throughout their lifetimes.  As a matter of fact, we had the chapel where her funeral was held decorated with all of the quilts we could put our hands on that she had made throughout her lifetime.  We also had her casket draped with one of her quilts.  It was an absolutely beautiful display:

Memorial photos taken by one of her granddaughters
(Either Nikki Haley or Jill Green - sorry ladies, I can't remember which one of you sent them!)

Grandma made wedding dresses for both of her daughters and most of her granddaughters, as well as several nieces, one daughter-in-law, and even the former high school girlfriend of one of her sons.  There were literally HUNDREDS of brides over the years in the Greater Greenville area who got married in a dress made or altered by my Grandma.  She also made dresses for bridesmaids, pageant queens, cheerleaders, and high school prom-goers.  For my senior prom, I picked my ideal dress out from a photo in a magazine, and Grandma made it - no pattern needed.

Grandma was also an amazing cook.  She made nearly everything from scratch.  She taught me how to cook starting at age 12, when I asked her to sit down and tell me how to make each of my favorite dishes of hers (including her macaroni and cheese).  I wrote down every word.  A few days later, while my mom and dad were at work, I decided that I was going to make our family's supper for that night.  I can't remember what all I made, but I know Grandma's macaroni and cheese was on the menu.  The only problem was that Grandma had misspoken when telling me what kind of milk to use - instead of saying evaporated milk, she had accidentally said condensed milk, and I was too inexperienced to know that this was WRONG!  Needless to say, my first home-cooked meal was quite an unforgettable one!

There were many, many times after that when I cooked dinner while my parents were working.  I would usually end up completely wrecking my mom's kitchen, but after that first misstep I believe the meals were usually pretty good!  I would call Grandma and have her walk me through the recipe steps over the phone while I was in the kitchen working.  As a matter of fact, I even continued to do this into my adulthood when trying something new.  Grandma taught me how to make and can jelly, marmalade and apple butter, over the phone - as recently as about ten years ago!

Grandma always seemed invincible to me.  In fact, when my paternal Granddaddy, Everett Powell, began getting senile and somewhat cantankerous toward the end of his life, there was one day when my mom, Grandma, and I were commisserating about the trials and tribulations of caring for the aging.  Grandma could sympathize because she had cared for her own father, my Great-Grandpa Earl Garrett who also became EXTREMELY cantankerous at the end of his life, until he passed away in 2001.  I turned to Grandma and told her that she was never, ever, EVER allowed to become old and decrepit!  She got quite a laugh out of that and told me that she would do her best.  Unfortunately, that was not to be the case.

Grandma entered assisted living in January 2022 after two years of living by herself after my Pa-Pa's death.  She had fallen several times at home in the preceding months and the family became afraid for her safety.  After having several episodes with TIAs (aka "mini-strokes"), her memory wasn't what it used to be and she would tell you the same thing 4-5 times (at least) in the same conversation.  She had difficulty walking because her knees were in terrible shape, and I think sometimes they just gave out on her.  She had trouble standing from a sitting position on the bed or sofa, and would frequently end up in the floor and unable to get up on her own.  Nevertheless, I somehow still expected her to live forever.

On February 27, 2022, Grandma Betty celebrated her 89th birthday.  Several family members visited her at the assisted living center and had an impromptu birthday party for her, complete with cake and ice cream.

  

Sometime in the middle of the night that night, Grandma got up to go to the bathroom and fell.  She hit her head pretty badly on something on the way down.  She was rushed to the hospital, where it was determined that she had a bleed on her brain, and she was in critical condition.  As if that weren't bad enough, she also had a blood clot in her leg, and she tested positive for COVID.  Her heart rate and oxygen saturation rate had both dropped to dangerous levels, and it was suspected that the resulting oxygen deprivation had caused some damage to her brain.  After a couple of days in the hospital, Grandma was sent home on hospice care.

On Sunday afternoon, March 6 (my sister's birthday), I went to visit Grandma for what I knew would probably be the last time.  My Aunt Sharon was at the house sitting with her that day.  When I walked in, Grandma was sleeping in the hospice bed and Sharon was on the couch reading.  Don Williams was serenading Grandma from an Amazon Echo mounted above her bed by my Uncle Randy.  I chatted with Sharon for a few minutes, then went to the bed to talk to my Grandma.  The black wig she had worn all of my life was gone, and her stark white hair stuck out underneath the knitted cap that Sharon had made her.  She snored like a chainsaw, sleeping heavily from the morphine she had taken earlier that morning.  She would have been embarrassed.

Sharon was concerned that Grandma had missed her last dose of morphine and would wake up in pain, so she came over to attempt to wake her.  She didn't have much luck, and it took several attempts from both of us over about a 15-20 minute period to finally get her awake.  Even then, she wouldn't stay awake for long.  However, I was able to communicate with her some, and eventually I started getting a response.  I teased her about looking like a "thug" every time the knit cap would get knocked sideways from her scratching at her scalp or slumping over in the bed.  I eventually got her to laugh.  I asked her if she knew who I was, and she turned to look at me.  Her mouth formed the "M," and she murmured something vaguely resembling "Melanie."  I knew that she recognized me.

Sharon told me that if there was anything in particular of Grandma's that I wanted, to go ahead and get it.  I told Sharon that because Grandma had taught me to cook from such a young age, the only thing I was interested in getting was a cast-iron frying pan if she had one (and I knew she very likely did, like any good Southern cook).  Sharon told me to go ahead and look in the kitchen cabinet and to take it if I could find it.  I did.  I came back to Grandma's bedside, and she was awake.  I asked her if she was going to turn me over her knee for making all that noise and banging around in her kitchen.  She laughed.  I held her hand and told her that I loved her.  She didn't respond.

I sat back down on the couch and chatted with Sharon for a few more minutes before I needed to head home.  As I said before, I knew that this would very likely be goodbye.  I went back to Grandma's bedside, and she was still awake.  I took her hand again and told her I loved her.  She turned her head toward me and said very clearly, "I love you, too."  I broke down.

"Say it again, Grandma.  I love you!"

"I love you, too."

I gave her a kiss and left.  They were the last words she ever said to me.

The following Wednesday morning, March 9, Grandma took a turn for the worse.  I got a call at work that she had become almost non-responsive and had lost her ability to swallow.  The hospice nurse advised the family to stop giving food and water (due to the choking hazard) and to only give swabs of water on/in her mouth to keep her mouth from drying out.  We knew her time was very short.

That evening after I got off work at 5:00, I went to meet a friend at a Greenville Swamp Rabbits hockey game.  The Swamp Rabbits were doing a promotion they called "Waggin' Wednesday," where people were invited to bring their dogs to the game and there were activities involving the dogs around the arena and during the breaks between periods.  My family told me to go ahead with my plans and that they would keep me updated about any changes.  Just before the game started, while my friend and I were walking around the arena petting the dogs, my phone rang.  I looked down and saw my dad's name, and I knew.  My dad doesn't usually call me unless something is wrong.  Grandma Betty had passed away about fifteen minutes earlier.

As I had done for my Pa-Pa Vealon, I also created a memorial video for Grandma's funeral, to be shown during her visitation.  It was truly a labor of love, but it still doesn't come anywhere near showing what an amazing person she was.  Nevertheless, it can be viewed by clicking the below link:

Grandma Betty's obituary can be found here.

As I said at the beginning, I have really struggled with this post.  I have still not fully grasped that she is gone, even after creating her memorial video, attending her funeral, and now writing this blog.  I still feel like I can just pick up the phone and call my Grandma if I have a cooking question, or if I find something interesting in her family history that I want to share or ask her about.  Then I catch myself and remember that she isn't there anymore to answer my call.  However, since the day after the funeral, there has been a mated cardinal couple that frequents my backyard, and I see them nearly every time I walk out on my back deck.  I know that my Grandma Betty and Pa-Pa Vealon are together once more, still keeping an eye on their oldest grandchild.