There are people who leave indelible prints on our hearts and lives. They help shape us and make us more of who we were meant to be. Their love is where we return when our hearts feel lost, and their words etch themselves like tattoos into our souls.
My Grandmother was one of those people for me. She’s been on my mind lately since her birthday is this week, and if she were still with us, she’d be 99. She’s been gone well over a decade now, and I still miss her.
This is a tribute and a lesson learned through her words.
I had thrown up my food again. I couldn’t think straight, let alone sleep or eat. My battle with anxiety and depression threatened to swallow me whole. I felt like a child in a 22-year-old’s body. To put it lightly, I was a mess. I took a leave of absence from work, and my poor husband, who had become my babysitter, dropped me off at my parent’s house every day as you would a child in need of supervision.
On this morning, my grandmother worked diligently to get me to eat something like she did most mornings. Though she’d never say so, the weight I had lost at an alarming rate scared her. The eggs she had made were now in the toilet and all over my shirt. She hovered over me with a washcloth to help clean up the mess I’d made while I lay crumpled on the floor. Hearing the commotion from the other room, my mom asked what happened. “She had an uh, oh, that’s all,” said my Grandmother with a wink of her ice-blue eyes as she brushed my hair lovingly from my face. It was just like her to make me smile while my world fell apart.
She Was My Nurturer.
My friends would question why I referred to her as “Grandmother,” thinking it sounded far too formal. She had made it clear she didn’t like to be called Grandma. She always used to say, “I’m not a maaa,” dragging out the short “a” sound, hinting at her Oklahoma roots. And although she opted for a serious title, she certainly wasn’t always serious.
My grandmother moved in with my family when I was 13 years old. Her living area was on the first floor of our house, where she could have privacy but still do life with us daily.
I turned to her when I felt the world and my own mind crumbling. Comfort greeted me as I walked through her French doors, where I’d find her reading while propped up on her well-made bed. I would crawl up next to her, where the afternoon sun trickled through sheer curtains, and the screen door welcomed a summer breeze that gently kissed the room. She waited with a smile and a quilt to cover me. Her arthritic-riddled hands would rub my much younger and healthier ones. She was the one in pain, and yet she loved, nurtured, and cared for the people around her unselfishly. Her presence was enough to calm the storm that would rage within me.
A Life Lived Well With Unforgettable Words
Her life was challenging, as her grandparents raised her in Oklahoma’s oil fields during the Great Depression. Her mother left her there, blustering in and out of her life like a dusty wind. When she was just 17, my grandmother moved west to San Francisco. She made a life, met a charming man, had two children, and climbed the hills in fashionable 6-inch heels to and from work at a bank.
No stranger to heartache, she survived decades of marriage to an unfaithful husband, three different bouts of cancer, the death of her second husband, then her only son, and her oldest grandson. I watched her endure each hardship with equal tears and hope, never growing bitter.
She left the city by the bay to live with us the second time she was diagnosed with cancer. My brothers and I grew up knowing our Grandmother loved us fiercely. She was a tiny woman with a giant personality and an even bigger will. I stood a full six inches above her and my brothers well over a foot. As we grew taller, we’d joke, telling her to “Grow more.” We’d say this while swooping in and kissing the top of her head before she could swat at our backsides. This funny expression got shortened to “Gro-mo” and became our term of endearment for her.
Her witty one-liners, like “Kiss me quick,” “Stirring up the dust,” and “I wish I were a rich man’s poodle dog,” became famous in our circle, and my brothers and I often still quote them with a grin. However, the words that stuck the most were the ones she spoke when I was broken by fear and the last words she’d ever speak.
A Tribute: She Had an Uh Oh.
As I think of the woman who held my hand in hers, I am overwhelmed by her love for me. Anxiety has always been a part of my story. Jesus has pruned, chiseled, and formed me through the fire of fear, and He gave me a Grandmother who loved me through it all. She never suffered from anxiety like I did. But you’d never know it by how compassionate she was through my mental health crisis. She nurtured me, comforted me, and encouraged me through my entire battle.
When anxiety threatens me today, I remember the words my grandmother said and the intent behind them. Those seemingly simple words have helped me see that it’s okay to be human, to be broken, to cry, and to be afraid. My sweet grandmother reminded me that it was just “An uh oh” when I feared the world might fall apart and take my mind with it. It was simply a bump in the road and a fall to rise up from. Having an “Uh Oh” meant I was struggling, but the struggle didn’t have to take me down.
To me, these simple words translate to something far more complex: I have anxiety, but anxiety doesn’t have me.
A Tribute: She reminded us to Carry On.
The woman who taught me how to smile through the tears—or vomit—and not be broken by the hurt has been gone for 14 years. I can hardly believe it’s been that long since I’ve held her hand or heard one of her silly one-liners.
The last words she spoke were a testament to how she lived life; “Carry on,” she said on repeat to each of her beloved family members in the hospital. She had suffered a stroke hours before, and she quickly lost all ability to speak. But her final words, along with how she lived her entire life, were a testament to living courageously with perseverance and carrying on no matter how hard life might get.
Today, which would have been her 99th birthday, was a perfect day to post a tribute and a reminder—to myself and the world—why I write and where the name for my blog originated from. This simple phrase, spoken by one of the greatest women I knew, is an anchor when life feels crazy, unpredictable, and hard.
As always, friend, thank you for stopping by,
