10: One Another, Part 2

 

For all that Maw Maw did for me, I was blessed to have two grandmothers growing up. In addition to Maw Maw, I also had Niney, Mildred Smith.

Niney lived with us for most of my life. My earliest memories were of her with us on trips, at events, and at school stuff as far back as I can remember. My grandfather Charlie passed away before I was born, and Niney was forced to live on her own for many years afterward. She became afraid of living on her own, so much so that she got scared when my dad came over to visit briefly and had difficulty getting to her in the house. After that, my dad suggested to my mom that maybe she should live with us so she would feel safer.

From then on, Niney was always a part of my life. Because of that closeness, Niney and I developed more of a sibling relationship rather than a grandmother-and-grandson type. We were always around each other, and sometimes that would cause strife. We would argue like brother and sister sometimes, and that would lead to moments where I would call my parents at work to tell them what Niney had done this time. The truth was, I just missed my mom and dad because they worked so much then, and I just wanted them to come home. But that didn't mean I needed to call them every 10 minutes. That type of day led to my dad's famous proclamation, "When you see the car in the driveway, you'll know we are home." I remember thinking, Ok! Time to stop calling now.

But the arguments Niney and I had were always born out of love. We cared a lot for one another. So, what these fights were always about was both of us kind of acting like children. Of course, I was a child, so you know that made sense. But, like children, we always made up very quickly. There was never animosity. I remember my parents coming home one time expecting to see the worst when they arrived because of yet another argument between Niney and me, only to find us playing and laughing and having fun together instead. Like I said, we were more like siblings sometimes.

Niney was the first one to help me learn how to drive a car. I remember being about 10 years old and Niney suggesting one day, "Would you want to turn the steering wheel?" I thought, Would I? I grabbed that thing so fast that I almost jerked the car off the road. Now, don't think for a minute she was letting me drive at 10. I was just doing the steering while she worked the pedals. It was good practice, and I became an ace at driving from the passenger seat. 

One of my favorite things to do with Niney was go to yard sales on Saturday mornings in the summer. We would drive all over Anderson County looking for good deals. But it was fun for me. You got to meet new, interesting people. Sometimes, we found really cool stuff. But the fun part was just driving around on a mission to find things fun to do. She loved going to the Jockey Lot, and I thought it was so cool then. But after the riding around, we would later go to Skin Thrasher's Hot Dogs, now known only as Skins. Back then, the only Skins in existence was the one down below what used to be McCants Middle School in front of First Baptist Church in Anderson. But the hot dogs were so yummy, especially with a Coke in a glass bottle.

But my favorite memory was something Niney did for me when I was about 9 years old. Back then, I was obsessed with the Ghostbusters. I couldn't get enough of watching that movie over and over and over. I loved it so much that I started my club for the Ghostbusters and tried to recruit friends at school. Well, in order to have a club, you had to have a cool clubhouse as a base for the Ghostbusters. I would take things from around the house to set up a base in our backyard at home. There was an old shelf for organizing things. I had an old beach chair I laid sideways for the main door to the clubhouse. It was all situated under a big pine tree in the backyard that acted as a roof, with a big open space underneath surrounded by bushes to either side that acted as walls. It was perfect to me but a bit overgrown from an adult standpoint. I'm not sure if Niney was worried about insects and snakes getting to us when we played back there or what her reasons were other than love for her grandson, but when I came home one day from school, I was on cloud nine.

Niney took me to the backyard to see my renovated clubhouse. I stood there looking at it as my jaw hit the ground. Niney had cleaned out a bunch of the overgrowth to make it look even more like walls and created a passageway from the main area to adjacent areas at the back of the yard. She brought out another old beach chair and created another door on the far end, down near a tree. There were chairs, tables, and other things that I could set up as a base of operations. It was beautiful!! I hugged her for fifteen minutes, it seemed. What Niney did, like Maw Maw, was always out of love.

That's why it became so hard, later on, to watch her body deteriorate from the scourge that is diabetes. When she showed me the hole in her foot that one evening, I had no idea how bad things would get for her in the years ahead. As a teenager, I thought that was all part of aging. I didn't know much about diabetes then. But thanks to the experiences of what Niney went through, I learned all too well just how much that disease can ravage a human being. Years later, once I could drive, I was the one driving her around as she had once done for me. But instead of going to school, we were taking her to doctor's appointments. Those times I spent the night with her in the hospital, I never knew I would be a nurse one day trying to tend to others dealing with similar circumstances. I never knew then what I would be facing now with my own life. 

When you're younger, you think things will always be the way they are for you for your entire life. I'm sure Niney thought that once, too. I doubt she imagined losing both of your legs, having strokes, or having to deal with diabetes. When she was younger, she was just like me then, believing she always would be. Now, she is younger, in heaven. I even pictured what she looked like in heaven one time in my book The Civilization Loop. A scene from the book showed God talking to a young woman named Mildred about the events unfolding on Earth. That is my Niney. She's always with me, as are Maw Maw and Paw Paw. They helped me see the problems I was having in my life three years ago, which helped me avoid some of the complications that arose for Niney. I can only imagine what would have happened to me had I not made changes in 2021. What if I decided I'm just going to live my life how I want, and who cares what happens. What if I had never gone to employee health that day, or it had been a year later when they stopped doing those check-ups on employees? Would I still even be alive today?

The good news is, I'm in a better place now than I have been in upwards of a decade. As a colleague of mine once said, "You've only just begun." Maybe the end is the beginning, to steal a slogan from my book. Maybe there's no beginning and no end, like from The Eternal Loop. I think I like that one best, as well as the story from the book. The reason is because it ends having all those we love together again after a journey of a lifetime. That sounds like Niney to me, too. She loved journeys, and I loved her for them.

But beyond my grandparents, I've had others in my life who helped me get to where I am today in this journey with diabetes. Stay tuned for the next installment of 10: One Another, Part 3.