Mawmaw in her own words from my album “Heart of the Mountain.”
It’s been several months since I’ve written a proper letter here. If you keep in touch with me on social media, you may have read that my grandmother Mawmaw passed away in early April. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years writing about Mawmaw, her mother Narcie, and my family in Appalachia. I was lucky to know Mawmaw for so many years of my life. Like my parents and my sister, she was at the very center of my life and all that I’ve made. So, approaching writing after her death has been like staring at a river that I just felt I couldn’t cross. But today with your kind ear, I thought I’d make a start.
This first letter back will be personal rather than about my songwriting or knitting or quilting. My doll and bear hospital and my days with glue and scissors have been a solace to me in these last few months and I have made some things which I look forward to sharing with you. Right now, I want Mawmaw to lead me, as she’s always done.
The last article I published here was about the legacy of Mawmaw’s mother Narcie’s quilts in my life and their connections to greater traditions of textile-making in circumstances of scarcity. I co-published “Scarcity Stitch” here on Substack with my great friends at Modern Daily Knitting and many of my new subscribers will have found your way here through that article. Welcome to everyone.
Mawmaw passed away a few weeks before I published “Scarcity Stitch,” but I had read it to her and she said, “I reckon” when I told her how many people would be reading about Narcie and seeing her quilts. Mawmaw loved patchwork and quilting so much. It was a constant in her life and her mother’s life. I’m glad she knew she’d passed their stitch legacy on to me. She’d sometimes say, “Well, honey, you’re going beyond me now with your patchwork. You’re gonna have to show me how you did that.”
At the end of every phone conversation between London, England, and Smith Ridge, Virginia, Mawmaw made a point of saying how proud she was of me and how much she loved me. She wanted to be sure I knew “in case something were to happen,” as she said.
As I left the nursing home just before she died, the last thing she said to me when she was half asleep was to call her when I got home – forgetting in her half-sleep that she hadn’t been able to physically reach over to answer a phone for a month or so. But I knew what she meant. She meant for me to stay in touch like I always had.
Many of you will know the sensation of reaching to pick up the phone to call someone who has died. It’s wanting to tell them something, to hear their voice, to ask a question.
By continuing to write about Mawmaw, I am making that call. She would be very sorry if I didn’t keep telling her story and our story. One of the last things she said to me as a sat with her for that last month was, “I’ll tell you any stories you want to know, honey.”
I have a lot of anger about Mawmaw’s death. I wake up in the night and I can’t get back to sleep because of the what-if’s and whys and the how could it happen like thats? I was not legally in charge of her health, the circumstances of her care, or what’s now happening to her house (our homeplace) and things. She’d been persuaded by another person to give them that control. Loyal to the end, she’d never failed in her hopes for them – that they’d come good in the end, honor her wishes. It’s an old tale – still, I could hardly believe I was in it. I am slowly finding a way to let go of this because Mawmaw would want me to.
My only way forward in her last month was to take care of the day to day. See if I could get the TV working and tuned to the Hallmark channel. Try to get a bit of food into her. Wash her face, apply lotions, do her makeup, cut and paint her nails, put blankets on, take blankets off. I could show kindness to the nurses, physical therapists, cleaners, and doctors who came into her room. I stayed in touch with family and kept them informed when I could take a minute. I hung cards and bunting and tried to make her dull room worthy of her colorful self.
We talked a little. I tried to explain to visitors that the doctor said she was “profoundly weak” when they were frustrated by Mawmaw’s tendency to fall asleep in the middle of their sentences. When I needed a break, other folks stepped in each in their own sometimes profound, sometimes muddled ways.
As I was in the middle of it, I thought, what a strange, frustratingly unsatisfactory, unceremonious way for someone I deeply love to spend her last weeks – with a seemingly random collection of family, friends, neighbors, and care workers who appear at the time. No grand plan. No collective acknowledgment that the end was coming. No graceful acceptance and plans made to carry her up home one last time. Just ad hoc.
But those who were there prayed. We sang. We moisturized. We laughed about wrinkles. Mawmaw said she thought while she was resting, she could at least work on her wrinkles. My cousin put rhinestone clips in her hair to show she was our queen. My dearest cousin helped me to cut her nails and massage her legs. She received calls and texts of encouragement. One of her sisters who has dementia and forgot why Mawmaw wasn’t walking kept saying, “Why doesn’t Ann just get up and walk out of here? Let’s take her home.” Her other sister brought her huge laugh like sunshine into the room. Mawmaw’s devoted neighbors and church brought everything with love. Cards came daily after I put out a call for them. The nursing home had never seen so much mail.
Her wall of love grew.
But Mawmaw grew more tired, more listless.
I changed her diaper when she just couldn’t bear one more stranger coming in to do it or when her back hurt too much. I ate a Pringle and she suddenly wanted one which I broke into small bits that she could dissolve on her tongue. She talked about the time her father’s brother went home angry and drunk from a family argument and shot his gun toward their house. She talked about her grandfather Hylton and how he moved his family to West Virginia because his people wouldn’t accept his half-Cherokee wife. She talked about what flowers she was missing along the bank by her house. She said she was cold. She said she was hot. She said she was glad I was there. She said she realized it didn’t matter that I didn’t have any babies because I’d written all of those songs – so many children, each song another one.
Mawmaw and I laughed. She didn’t cry. She was so brave. I cried and she didn’t mind. She just patted my head. I held her hand a lot. She was grumpy, in pain, disappointed, resolved, funny, impatient, tired, dignified, and loving. The last thing she ever saw on TV was the second half of The Green Mile. She said, “Honey, I don’t rightly know what this program is about?” And I said, “I think it’s about how people aren’t always who they might seem to be and it’s about hoping that people will do the right thing in the end.”
She said, “I dreamed that you’d come and take care of me and here you are.”
I will always feel that I didn’t do enough. I realize that I wasn’t authorized to make any profound decisions regarding Mawmaw’s health or her affairs and that meant my movements would always be limited. I also realize that I had never been in a position of such deep responsibility regarding another person’s minute comfort or pain. I had no experience or training. I just loved her. I did my best, but still I feel I somehow fell short.
When I went to be with my grandmother, I thought I would be visiting for a week or so and returning later in the summer to go with her on a beach vacation. In the end, I was with her for her last month and she died, not at home, not on the mountain she loved, but in a nursing home, alone in the middle of the night. I will always feel the frustration of not giving her the death she wanted in the place that she wanted.
I will also always be grateful for the days of holding her hand, for the silly things that got us through, and for the bear I gave her during the last month of her life which she latched onto like he was a big character that she’d always loved. She named him Avery after her father. He’s sitting right beside me now and she’s sitting right beside me now, too, like always just differently.
I hope this will be the beginning of being able to write here again and share with you all of the things that Mawmaw taught me to love and treasure. Singing, family, quilts, dolls, and telling stories.
Thank you for taking my call.
Your friend,
Jeni
When Mawmaw was moved into the nursing home where she spent most of her last weeks, I sent out a call for cards for her 92nd birthday. So many of you answered my call and your cards became her Wall of Love. She absolutely marveled at it. I read every card to her and she was tickled at how many people wrote from so many places. I made sure to tell her about the ones that were on the way, too, because I began to worry they might not make it in time. She received them all with every bit of the love they held. I have them all and keep them in her memory.
Thank you.
If you’re new here, you can read a short history of me and my work here.
Substack Notes where I post pictures and thoughts plus excerpts from other writers whose work I’m enjoying.
My shop where you can buy real albums that you can hold in your hand.
My website.
Instagram and Facebook where I post my adventures almost daily.
My articles for Modern Daily Knitting.
Dozens of my songs were inspired by stories Mawmaw told to me. If you’d like to hear some of them and read the stories behind them, here are a few.
The Apple Tree Church
I’m still writing down the testimonies of our Appalachian family. These are about murder, gingerbread, washing day, quilts, saving, singing, and a bunch of children making a church among the apple trees.
Dear Jeni, I am so grateful to hear that you were with your MawMaw for her last month on this physical plain. What a gift to her, and to you. Your presence, care, and love were more important than anything. Please know that you are way more than enough. Take good care of yourself as you navigate this time. Lots of love to you.
Bless you for writing all the thoughts, feelings and experiences of you and your Mawmaw and your entire amazing story about her last days with you. You are an inspiration and a joy. You are a storyteller with pizzazz and gusto, with flair and sparkle, with oomph and aaah. You are my sister from far away, and a sister to all of us. Thank you and many hugs to you and your family.