Tears and Jimmy Dean

All it takes is sixty seconds. From the same technology that ended World
War II, it disintegrated buildings, along with cities and people. We have something that will heat our food from the inside out in less than a minute. For me this morning it was not nourishment I received from Jimmy Dean’s delectable sausage biscuits, but a trip down memory lane:

My grandma Reba Ramsey died when I was in the fourth grade. Lung cancer was the culprit. That’s the proportion needed to take out a woman like my grandma. She was magnificent. She was a powerhouse of a grandma proportions packed into 125lbs of old woman. Tall and slender her demeanor was soaked with southern hospitality. Her southern draw made her tea all the sweeter and gravies all the tastier. It was Grandma Reba that made me these Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits when I was young.

She spoiled me along with my brother and sister, buying us toys every time we went anywhere. She made me biscuits and gravy anytime I wanted, and for desert, cookie dough ice cream. “With extra cookie dough.” I’d always command without fail. It had to have bothered her. But with her skinny hands she pick out little bits of cookie dough out of her ice cream and into mine. Along with many other spoiling tactics she’d also let me close the shower doors and splash as big as I wanted when I took my bath at night. I remember the mountains of bubbles she’d prepare just for me to crush them with my chubby arms. It’s almost funny to think about now. I remember her specifically saying in her soft and slow southern speak, “Now wait till’ I get out and close the door now, ya hear?” And upon the latching door I’d smite the bubbled mountain people and their homes. All of the tiled walls inside the bathtub riddled with their remains. She’d even go out in the hot sun or cold winter and play horse with me. She’d beat me even! She invented the “Grandma” between the legs shot. She’d take us to the local video store and let us each get our own game. And just when you thought her excellence was at its peak; she would play the games with us we rented, for hours. (NBA Jam, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Monopoly were her favorites.) She loved us so much. It was so unconditional, I think about her so often.

I often think about her death. How new death was to me at the time. How I didn’t understand it. How I still don’t understand it. In the forth grade I was forced into a whole other realm. Unparalleled to anything I’d ever experienced. Seeing my grandfather and father weeping at her funeral, to see two grown men steeped in southern upbringing cry and show such and extreme and intimate emotion. It changed me. I think often that my grandma was barely a sinner. That God looked at her and thought, “You should be up here with me as soon as possible.”

But more often than her death I think about her life. I think about all the things she did for my family and me and for her church. I think about how proud she was of her grandchildren. Often I wonder what she’d look like today, or what she’s day about my long hair and lifestyle. I wonder if when she’d feed me she’d still use the “growin boy” excuse. I know she always wanted to travel, and she certainly would have envied how lucky I am to do what I do. My grandma was a saint and a servant. I don’t think you can be one without the other. I miss her so much.