A Reading - Train 106 and the magical pear tree ©

Train 106 and the Magical Pear Tree

Precious and Painful

As anyone following this blog knows, one of its key components is my mother's stories. This morning I have spent a fair amount of time going through the stories she typed - I still have her journals to complete. From the ones that she typed or handwrote and placed in her blue folder,  I have transcribed six, plus another from one of her many journals. I still have twenty to go, just from the ones she compiled in this folder. I have decided on the one I will transcribe next - it doesn't have a title - so I think I'll call it Train Number 106, maybe just 106.

As I sorted through the stories, some of the things that I hoped would be in there were - Granddaddy's Lost Treasure, Robert Fulton and the Diamond Ring, Granddaddy's stories of those durn little Chickasaws that stayed on the farm and caused mischief, and even one about our dog, Katy.

Suddenly, I was overcome with grief. While I am blessed to have these stories in writing, I will never hear her tell them again - not in person. I do have a video of her telling three. So while this labor of love is absolutely a joy for me in most ways, it also plunges me into the depths of despair.

Mama, you are forever missed and forever loved.

Her Last Ride by Heather Smith ©

Disclaimer: No one was really for digging Grandmama back up, but it's a funny thought - also, my memory is shot to hell - so very little of what I write is historically accurate.

Grandmama picked out her coffin herself- years before it was needed. Nice right? I mean for a coffin. Her funeral was held four years ago today and she is deeply missed. I wrote her obituary myself. But one thing I forgot to mention in that ostentatiously long obituary was her love of luxury cars and her love of travel which I suppose go hand and hand.

Over the weekend, my daughter came down to visit us from Indiana and her grandfather from her dad's side is in the hospital, so we went to see him. In the course of the conversation, Ed and I started talking about how I first came to know the Simpson family. Bryan and Jeff (Jim's brothers) both attended West Charlotte with me and I told Ed I always thought Jeff bought Grandmama's  Chrysler Newport. It was brown with a half leather top, and Jeff bought it just after Grandmama traded her car in. She always drove the "gas guzzlers," that's what Granddaddy called them. He tried to compensate by driving a VW Karmann Ghia. Grandmama had a steady succession of larger and more elaborate cars. With each car she considered quality and style - so too were the choices in her last ride - her beautiful pink coffin- which I am glad she got to pick out herself; nobody had her same sense of sophistication. The last car she drove was a pearl-colored Lincoln Town Car that had a bumper sticker announcing to the world "I'm spending my children's inheritance." Thinking of Jeff made Ed tear up a bit. He passed just a year or two ago now, far too young, and such a sweet person. But like Grandmama, he had a taste for large cars that went fast.

The first car I remember Grandmama having was a red Chrysler of some sort with a black leather half top which fit her perfectly because when I was that little, Grandmama was the age I am now and she dyed her hair jet black and wore shiny red lipstick and nail polish. It struck me how she matched her car. I loved piling in that huge car with my family for a road trip, usually, my Aunt Lillian, Grandmama's sister would be in the passenger seat fiddling with the map. My sister, Pam, my cousin Rachel, and I would sit in the back seat. Actually, back in the 70s, you didn't have to sit in the seat, you could play on the floor or sit looking out the back window making faces at the people behind you, you could lean up into the front or stand if you were still little enough. We had these Tom's Candy containers that had been filled with pixy-stick type candy of grape or orange and the top had a loop in it so you could hang it around your neck, we each had one filled with water around our necks.  Mine was grape-shaped. We went to Orlando and Cape Hatteras both that summer. riding stylishly trying to avoid the smoke pluming from the front seat.  Patsy, Rachel's mom, drove in a separate car with my cousins Tommy and Ronnie. Patsy was the creator and keeper of our itinerary and she made sure we got to see and do it all. Good times.

When Ronnie lived with us in PA for a while his car was on the fritz and he had to drive Grandmama's car everywhere. He told me that he felt like people were staring at him because an old lady belonged in that car. He shouted at one guy "That's right, my grandma loves me!" I'm sure Jeff Simpson did not consider her old car and old lady car, but rather, a muscle car. And even though she drove those tanks she was terrified to drive in the snow. In high school, I worked at the Pennwood Branch Bucks County Free Library. Daddy said I could get a job as long as it was within walking distance of the house, and normally I did walk. One evening, it was snowing pretty badly when I left and the librarians all fussed that I should get a ride home. They were afraid I would slip on those sidewalks. Grandmama came to pick me up and she said: "You know your Grandmama loves you, I would not drive in the snow for many people."

On the day of her funeral, it snowed like crazy, which is unusual for Mississippi. I thought she wanted to see if people loved her enough to drive in the snow. Plenty of people gathered to celebrate her life. The pastor asked the immediate family all up to the front for a family prayer and just as we were finishing the prayer the funeral director asked if we wanted her effects. My dad motioned no as he wiped tears from his eyes. We could not gather at the gravesite for the burial because the ground was frozen and it would take a while for them to inter her. We all went out to lunch as a group - or maybe we went back to Charles' -  I don't really remember - even though she was 98 and I knew she was going to die, it tore me up a lot more than I expected, but anyway we returned to the funeral home from wherever we had been to gather all of the things we had brought for the service to discover that Grandmama had been buried with her glasses and rings on. They said that they could dig her back up to get these belongings. Pam was for it! I thought "Just let her keep her rings." In the end, we decided to let her rest and not disturb her. For me, it would be hard to think of Grandmama without her flashy jewelry. Now my Grandmama rests beside her first husband - I'm sure his coffin is the most basic type, much like his Karmann Ghia, and Grandmama is in her Cadillac of Coffins just to irritate him throughout eternity. Granddaddy even told me once: "The week after I die, she's going to go buy a diamond ring and book a cruise." I don't know about the cruise, but I do know that exactly a week after he died, Pam and I were in the jewelry store with her while she picked out a diamond garter for her engagement ring. She did travel plenty in years following. I for one am happy that Grandmama had a great time spending her children's inheritance. For a kid who grew up in the depression, she really got to experience a lot.

I wish I could go out with her just one more time to her favorite Mexican restaurant and enjoy a jumbo margarita with her right now.


Grandmama's Obituary:

Virginia Fears Pierce Keys, 98, passed away on Monday, January 18, 2016, at Sunrise on Providence in Charlotte. Virginia Lorene Fears was born on December 11, 1917, in Monroe County, Mississippi to Lena Mundy and James Henry Fears. Virginia had 2 older sisters, Glen and Lillian, two older brothers, Ira and Norval, and two little brothers, Rubel and Charles. She was an excellent student, but she always loved to socialize and her grades could suffer as a result. She graduated from high school in June 1935. She had already met her future husband at a dance. Virginia married Erie Fleedon Pierce on October 19, 1935, in Mississippi when she was 17 years old. They moved to St. Louis where Erie had accepted a job at Monsanto. There they had their first child; James Eric was born on February 23, 1940. Virginia’s husband pursued a military career which took them to California. Their son Ronald David was born on September 21, 1943. Erie left for the war shortly after Ron was born. Virginia moved back to Amory, MS while Erie was overseas. She was there with her boys for three years. When Erie returned, he was stationed in many places – the last of which was Boston. Virginia became an Assistant for the Promotions Division of Electronic Corporation of America-Combustion Control from February 4, 1954 – May 2, 1958. She had a stellar work record and was considered an indispensable employee. She resigned when Erie retired from the Army and got his Master’s Degree. He pursued a teaching career and took the family back to Mississippi. In addition to her work in Boston, Virginia helped her husband run an ice cream parlor, a car wash, and two motels. She had a head for business. In 1960, they moved to Memphis where they could be close to their grandson, Ron Jr. Virginia kept Ron Jr. while his mother was working. She loved being “Grandmama.” Virginia lost her mother and husband within months of each other in 1979. Her husband, Erie Fleedon, passed away on May 23, 1979, in Amory at the age of 69. They had been married for 43 years. They lived in a penthouse at the beach at the time of his passing, and the hotel sold for enough to keep her comfortable for the rest of her life. Virginia moved to England for a year with her brother, Rubel, shortly after Erie died. There she made some lifelong friends. Upon her return to the States, her son, Ric, had been called back to active duty. She moved in with Pam, her granddaughter, in order that Pam could graduate with the people she had gone to school with all of her life. After Pam graduated, Ric moved Virginia, Pam, and Heather to Pennsylvania. The time the four of them spent together in PA would be cherished by all parties. Her grandson, Ron Jr., came to live there for a time, as well. Her bond with these three grandchildren was more similar to a mother than a grandmother. At age 69, Virginia took a cruise with the retired officer’s club. On the cruise, she met Charles Travis Keys. He was also from Mississippi. He was a Navy Pilot in WWII and a bona fide rocket scientist. They had seven happy years together before he passed away on April 10, 1994, in Ocala, Florida, at the age of 73. Virginia continued to travel after Charlie died and she enjoyed her home in Ocala. She was a Charter member of Ocala West UMC and a strong supporter of the Republican Party. She lived on her own until age 87. She then went to live in NC with her son, Ric. She remained in his home for two years before going into assisted living; she had been in Alzheimer’s Care for two years when she died. Virginia was generous, fun, accepting, and elegant. She lived a good life and enriched the lives of those she touched. She is survived by two sons, Ric and Ron Pierce; six grandchildren, Ron Pierce, Jr., Pamela Hausle, Heather Smith, Erika Tucker, Lesley Murphy, and Loren Pierce; and seven great-grandchildren; brother, Charles Fears (Darlene). Her Funeral Service will be held at 10:45 AM, Friday, January 22, 2016, at E. E. Pickle Funeral Home, Amory, with The Reverend Dr. Larry Kay Hardesty officiating. Burial will be in Masonic Cemetery. Visitation will be from 10 – 10:40 AM, Friday at the funeral home. Memories and condolences may be shared with family at EEPickleFuneralHome.com.

Leaving Pennsylvania by Heather Smith ©

Geoff Hansell and Heather Pierce at the wedding of Charlie and Ginny (Virginia Pierce) Keys

So, this blog is supposed to have a schedule - which I abandoned for a while to get some of Mama's stories typed up for my aunt. Today is supposed to be about my Pierce grandparents - and I think this is the most shocking thing Grandmama ever did to me. I really could not believe she just left me alone in the hospital.

I was a pretty sick kid the whole time we lived in PA, but especially the last two years - which were the same years I dated Geoff Hansell and attended Bucks County Community College. I was in and out of this hospital called St. Mary's. I remember being on the phone with Geoff one night when I was 19. Daddy and I were living in the condo at Tarrytown Estates together - just the two of us. My grandmother had married Charles Travis Keys, a bona fide rocket scientist, and moved away to Top of the World retirement community in Ocala, Florida. My sister had run off with a towny she met at Centenary College in NJ and they were living in Greely, Colorado where they presumably attended the University of Northern Colorado. My mother lived in NC and taught at UNC Charlotte.

Daddy decided that he was going to get me well by feeding me. He made a big batch of pierogies and baked some frozen stuffed clams. I ate it greedily and promptly threw up my toes. I went upstairs and called Geoff. "I haven't kept anything down for four days," I confessed. "I'm afraid to tell Daddy because he'll make me go to the hospital." Geoff replied, "Heather, if you haven't kept anything down for four days, maybe you should be in the hospital." I knew he was right.  So I went downstairs and leveled with Daddy about what was going on with me. He looked so sad, but snapped immediately into action and told me to get a bag packed because I might be in the hospital for a while.

As luck would have it, Grandmama was still in town for the last week of summer before Charlie's grandkids all had to go back to school. She and Charlie were going to be around for the next few weeks. I got admitted to St. Mary's and Daddy had to leave for Wisconsin where he was doing some sort of training mission with the Army Reserves.

I shared a room with some lady. While I was trying to go to sleep I could hear a noise like someone shaking a jar filled with marbles. Grumpily, I yelled, "Quit playing with your marbles, lady!" The next day, she asked for a room transfer. Apparently, I had offended her while she was praying on her rosary. I didn't even know what a rosary was at that point in my life.  But at least I had the room to myself for the duration of my stay. Grandmama came in my room and gave me a twenty. She said that she and Charlie had to go back to Florida, there was a ball with the lodge that they had already paid for and she didn't want to miss it. She gave me Charlie's daughter's number and money for a cab so I could get home since no member of my family was within 600 miles of the hospital. I couldn't believe she was leaving. But then, yes, I could.

I was released two days later and took a cab home. It was two days before my twentieth birthday. I got home to the empty condo and the next day Daddy came home. He decided we needed to do something special for my twentieth, especially, since I had plans to move back to NC the following week to go to UNCC. Daddy, Kim, and Geoff took me out to dinner in New Hope.  We had a lovely time looking at the shops and eating outside. I wore my leopard print mini skirt with matching halter and black heels. Somewhere, I have a picture of it. I knew this would be one of my last times with Geoff in New Hope. Maybe the last time. He would never move to NC, and I had made up my mind that April when I went to  Tyler State Park with John Rich, Kurt Myers, and some others from my youth group that I would go home to NC and never live in PA again as I watched them cross the frozen creek in April. In April!

I still had a problem. My birthday is on August 18. Classes started on August 26. I still didn't know how I was going to move to NC. Daddy couldn't take me, he had several speaking engagements scheduled. Mama was getting ready for classes. Geoff mentioned to me that Al, Geoff's best friend, and his fiance had called things off that night when we were in New Hope. Al owned a van.

The next day, I called Al and asked him if he would drive me to NC. He had the time off - it would have been the week of his honeymoon. He agreed to take me, but first, my dad wanted to meet him. Al was - well he still is - half Japanese and half American. He agreed to come to meet Daddy, he said before I left he would take me out to a real Japanese Restaurant. Daddy just loved him, he has such good manners and deferred to Daddy in a way Geoff never did. He had Geoff meet us at his house after our sumptuous meal. Geoff and I said our goodbyes and he sped away upset in his huge yellow Caprice Classic; we had some good times in that car.  I was upset but also excited because a new chapter in my life would start tomorrow.

Al came early the next morning to pick me up. All of my stuff - including my stereo - fit neatly in the back of the van with room to spare. Al was, of course, devastated because his fiance had called things off. We spent the entire trip listening to Shattered Dreams by Johny Hates Jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctwqa3QCwMw

But we still managed to have a good time. We had always had a good friendship and it was therapeutic to talk about our ended relationships. Somewhere near Fredericksburg, we were supposed to pick up I-85. We got incredibly lost on a crossroads. We laughed hysterically at nothing. We went all three wrong directions before finally getting turned around the right way and picking up 85. We stopped at the first Cracker Barrel I ever ate at and that made us a lot less punchy. I don't think either one of us slept the night before. I was worried about Geoff and wishing there were a way we could work it out. But, let's face it, the biggest success factor in a relationship is close proximity.

Al and I finally arrived in Charlotte around 9PM - about 4 hours later than we should have been there. Mama greeted us. And Al and I began to unload the van into my new apartment - the other half of my mom's duplex. The first thing Al wanted to do the next morning was to drive to Monroe, NC, where his biological father owned a golf course. We got there and we just drove by it, I thought we were going to go in so he could meet his dad, but I guess it was too painful. We went back to Charlotte and stopped at Eastland Mall. We had lunch in Annabelle's and then went to the theater to see Cocktail. It was a nice, feel-good, summer movie. Some guy hit on me while Al was buying popcorn. It did wonders for my ego.

The next day, Al got locked into the apartment. He was sleeping and I didn't want to wake him. Mama was taking me to register for classes. She had to go to her office anyway and the line at the Belk Gymnasium was about a three-hour wait. She said for me to meet her back at the office when I was done. I got all finished by around noon and walked back to her office in the Garinger Building. When we drove into the driveway Al was pressing his nose against the window and he was completely freaked out. Mama said she'd make it up to him. That evening she took us to walk around First Ward. We had a great time at Rosemary's bookshop, which was called Poplar Street Books. Al and Rosemary had a nice chat about her architectural section and Al bought a book as a souvenir. Then we went to eat at Alexander Michael's, which was just a few doors down. The next morning Al left early and I got used to living in Charlotte with my mother again pretty quickly. I didn't realize how much I had missed everything until I was gone for four years.

Here's to Charlotte.

Grandma, Cousin Mayhew, and the Road Grader ©

I think there are more stories than I realized. I am trying to get a bunch of these things typed out before I go see Aunt Cabby. I'm damn sure not going to move the folder stuffed with them from my house - it is perhaps the best thing I have and certainly the best thing I have of hers besides the YouTube videos I have of her telling some of these wonderful stories. I loved hearing her tell this one. It is about her Grandmother Moss who she called Grandma.

Grandma Moss, Cousin Mayhew, and the Road Grader

by Anita West Moss ©

See, my grandmother is eighty-six years old and doesn't know who she is or where she's at most of the time. Sometimes she thinks I am one of her daughters and sometimes she thinks she is a little girl herself.  But sometimes she knows everything and just pretends not to -- like the time she took off her clothes and paraded around the house just to shock that fat Baptist preacher she can't stand. Grandma is my daddy's mama, and her full name is Martha Virginia Duke Moss, but most folks call her Miss Virgie. I help take care of her even though I am only 5 years old, but she thinks she takes care of me. I have to help her give herself shots twice a day for sugar diabetes. See, she grabs a bunch of flesh on her leg and holds onto it while I swab it with rubbing alcohol. Then I measure the insulin from the little glass bottles until it reaches the right mark on the syringe.  Then I put the needle in quick and press on the syringe real slow. It looks awful and Grandma's legs are all purple. She says she has had sugar diabetes since she was thirty-five years old and plans to eat anything she wants as long as she lives. Old Dr. Reed comes to see her about once a month and cusses and carries on because she won't stay on a diet. Anyway, she ain't hard to take care of except that time she stuck her whole hand in the electric fan and got blood all over the room. It was summer and Mama and Daddy were working in the cotton field. I quick bandaged her up with a kitchen towel as best I could and then hightailed it out the back leaving the screen to slam behind me. Mama had a literal bloody mess on her hands, but it all ended up okay - she didn't lose no fingers or nothing. Most of the time she sits in her big rocking chair on the front porch in her navy blue cotton dress that buttons up the front and has a white starched collar and cuffs. She rocks and fans herself with a heart-shaped palm-leaf fan that says Pickel Funeral Home on it. "Get pickled at Pickels," I'd sometime hear the adults joke like that. She watches Greenbriar Cemetery close to see who has died lately because it tickles her that she has just about outlived everybody she knew when she was young.

She likes to look out at the little green cotton plants and the dark fresh-plowed earth and fruit trees and garden and say that this farm is the garden spot of the world and all the heaven she needs. She likes to tell how she took care of her thirteen children and lost three babies down there in the cemetery and buried her husband and raised three orphan grandchildren all by herself. "I organized this farm and made it flourish when they were all saying I would have to sell it off for a song when the depression hit," she'd say, her black eyes flashing. Lots of times I could get her going and telling about when she was a little girl or she'd quote verses she memorized in school or the proverbs or Ben Franklin's aphorisms. Anyways, she has a saying for everything, and sometimes  I wish she would just shut up. Aunt Alice says the same thing. If I want to get some sleep in the morning, she'll start quoting "early to bed, early to rise..." or "the early bird catches the worm." Or if I'm trying to primp in the mirror and complain because I don't look like Heddy Lamar or Veronica Lake or even Betty Grable (who ain't, I mean isn't, that pretty anyway). Grandma will start in with her favorite saying of all: "Beauty skin deep, ugly to the bone; beauty fades away, but ugly holds its own." Then she'd start in about how pretty she used to be -- better looking than any of her daughters, daughters-in-law, or granddaughters. "And just look at me now -- pore old pitiful ugly thing!" Or if my sister would try to take her picture on Sunday when she was all dressed up for preachin' with her cameo shining at her bosom, she'd slap away the camera and say "Get that thing away from me! You know I look like hell!" And we'd all laugh and she would too except I'd notice she looked a little sad, too.

So I'd get her going every time I could 'cause I loved more than anything to hear what happened a long time ago before I was even borned or even before mama or daddy was borned. "Lord, child," Grandma would say, "I'm older than dirt! I can't remember all that mess that happened so long ago." But then she would cross her wrinkled spotted hands in her navy blue lap like two gnarled up sassafras roots and set in to tell about it. She said that her daddy was a Virginia aristocrat with a club foot who came to Mississippi from Norfolk to buy land and wound up marrying a black-eyed girl who was one-quarter Chickasaw and an orphan to boot and so his uppity family wouldn't have anything else to do with him. That part-Chickasaw woman was my great-grandmother, and Grandma said she was mean as a snake and never gave her husband a minute's peace. "She drove pore old Papa directly into his grave," she'd say with a mean look on her wrinkled face. "And then she just couldn't wait to marry off her daughters. If Papa had just lived I could've been studying Latin in my old age and remembering my students instead of wasting time on this farm. I always said my girls wouldn't have to marry unless they wanted to. I said "There's plenty of work for all of us and plenty of food on this fine farm. As long as I have a home, you have a home; as long as I have bread, you have bread." Yes, sir, those are the very words I said to Leo after her sickly mama passed and left her with nobody because her papa had already worked his poor self to death." And she'd sit quiet for a while and say, "Lord, I didn't want to marry that old man."

Lots of times, like I said Grandma got stuff mixed up. Like that day in July when we sat on the front porch and she started thinking about her cousin, Mayhew Duke. She said Mayhew was her favorite cousin and she hadn't seen him and his wife Estelle for the longest time. "You remember Cousin Mayhew, don't you?" she asked? 
"No, ma'am, I never heard of him. He doesn't go to the Baptist Church, I reckon." 
"Course he does; Mayhew's been a deacon for years." Grandma looked at me with those black eyes she got from her Chickasaw Mama, and they were flashing and spitting. They could bore right into you if she was mad or curious. "I'll tell you what. Go get my bonnet and your sun hat and we'll just walk down to Acker Corners and visit with him and Estelle for a while. Estelle is a wonderful cook -- makes the lightest pie crusts and cooks her vegetables just right and makes good cornbread. Course, she ought to cook right; I taught her how to cook. Grandma said an old nigger woman named Aunt Annis taught her how. Aunt Annis had been the main cook on the Flint plantation before the war. "My own mama couldn't put a meal fit for hogs on her table," Grandma would say, her lips curling.

"So, come on, let's get going. Estelle'll have dinner ready about the time we get there."

I looked at that big pan of purple hulls and thought that just about anything would be better, so I ran to the back porch to get Grandma's sunbonnet. My hat was straw, but painted white and looked like Dale Evans' hat, so I didn't put up a fuss about having to wear it the way I usually did. "Do you want your brains to boil, you silly fool?" my sister would say, "Put on that hat." I pictured the pork brains Mama fried up with eggs for Daddy's Sunday breakfast and put on the hat quick. I got Grandma's walking cane, too because I knew she'd need it on the graveled road, even if I heard the road grader buzzing and whirring that morning.

So that's how we started out walking on the hottest mid-morning in July I could remember. You could just see the heat rippling in waves in the distance; dust and gravel burned my red sandals from Montgomery Ward's in Chicago. I trudged along feeling that maybe we ought to go home before we got too far away,

"Cousin Mayhew's wife, Estelle will most likely give us a good drink of fresh lemonade when we get there; she likes to make it in that cut-glass pitcher she inherited from her aunt in Memphis," Grandma said. She stumbled along in her cotton flesh-colored stockings rolled on garters above her knees. Her swollen feet were encased in black lace-up oxfords with thick square heels. My daddy had to take her all the way to Pontotoc to get them. They were thera-something shoes. "Old lady shoes," I thought looking at my neat brown feet in their red sandals. "I hope I never have to wear ugly shoes like that or have ankles fat that way." Then I began to dream about Dorothy's ruby slippers and wish I had them right then. Grandma and I would just fly over to Cousin Mayhew's and get that lemonade.

Out loud I said, "She might give us some tea cakes, too," because my tummy was beginning to fuss, "or some ice cream from her frigidaire."

"Lord have mercy," Grandma said, "Estelle wouldn't be caught dead serving any store-boughten ice cream with that tacky cardboard taste, but she and Mayhew are crazy for freezer ice cream, specially with peaches cut up in it."

"Well let's hurry and get there, Grandma. I'm burning up and starving, too," I said, wriggling under my floursack sunsuit because the sweat was streaming between my skinny shoulder blades. I could see wet spots under Grandma's arms and she mopped her fiery red face with a wadded up lace-trimmed handkerchief.

Loose dirt was piled high on one side of the road where the road grader had scooped it up that morning, I knew it was way too soft to sit in, but Grandma didn't remember that. 

"Lord, I'm wore out," she said, "Let's sit down." And with that, she plunked her bottom down on that soft loose dirt and kept on going. The first thing I knew, her black oxfords and flesh-colored old lady stockings were flying over her apron and navy blue skirts in a crazy backward somersault and her sunbonnet was nowhere to be seen. She landed right in the middle of that steep ditch in the middle of the brier patch, just like Brer Rabbit, but for Grandma, this was no laughing place. In fact, that fall didn't improve her disposition at all. Grandma didn't often say bad words, but she would cuss if she got mad enough, even if she did like to pretend to be a well-bred and tragic confederate lady.

"Goddamit, get me out!" she yelled. I took off my red sandals and clambered down the steep bank into the briers and bitterweed at the bottom of the ditch and began pushing her from behind. 

"Get up, Grandma. No, take your shoes off and then climb out like this," I said, and scrambled back up the bank. 

"Take my shoes off? It would take a week to get them off these swollen feet in this heat and I'd never get them back on again, she yelled. "I can't believe I've lived eighty-six years, birthed sixteen children, raised thirteen, just to die of heatstroke in this snake-infested ditch," she said. And then her old voice cracked and she set in to blubber.  I jumped back down in the ditch and didn't cry yet because my feet were so full of stickers but instead I hauled on her some more. But then I could tell, I wasn't big enough to get her out,  and I began to bawl myself. I watched the little rivulets on my dusty feet and legs where my tears fell on them. "We're pitiful and lost,  aren't we, Grandma?" I said feeling terrible because somehow I had failed at my job of taking care of Grandma. "But I'll dig up some roots and pick some berries when it cools off a little," I said, remembering a story I heard of two lost babes.

"Durn Mayhew," Grandma muttered, "I never did like him anyway."

About that time, I heard a motor complaining and whining up the road and climbed out of the ditch fast to see who it was. 

"Hurrah!" I cried, "The road grader is coming -- we're saved!" I waved my arms wildly and shouted "Emergency - Mayday - Mayday!" like they did in the WWII movies I saw on Saturday afternoon.

Mr. Cooper Cantrell was driving the road grader. He was an elected official -- the county supervisor of roads, but folks could never find him in his office because he liked to drive the road graders so well. I knew him and liked to go back to his house because he had a mean old parrot named Al who attacked me once, but then we made up. Some folks said he sold whiskey on the side, and that's why he could build Miss Lalia-Faye such a fine house. Mr. Cooper Cantrell pulled up abreast of us and stopped the road grader. He climbed down with his eyes big and his mouth hanging open and slack. "Miss Virgie, what in the world are you doing in that ditch?"

"Just taking a little nap," Grandma snapped, real sarcastic, and then she said in a real mean voice, "Get me outta here this instant, Cooper Cantrell. Miss Rosie Cantrell didn't bring you up to stand there and gawk with a lady flat on her back in a damned brier patch. She brought you up to be  gentleman, and I know that for a fact because we were inducted into the Daughters of the Confederacy at the same ceremony, now hurry up and get a move on."

"Yes'm. yes'm," Mr. Cantrell said. He got down in the ditch and shoved Grandma out on the gravel. She moaned and cussed and complained the whole time. I sat down in the hot gravel and picked the stickers out of my feet and put my sandals back on; then I tried to brush off all the dirt and dust that was smeared all over my yellow sunsuit. Cabby would be mad because she had just ironed it; my french braids were coming undone too, and I had lost my yellow hairbows. I finally spotted Grandma's sunbonnet, though and my sunhat was hanging down my back. Finally, Mr. Cooper Cantrell got us both in the road grader, and we all began to feel a whole lot better. Mr. Cantrell let me sit in his lap and drive the road grader all the way back home.

"Miss Virgie, where were you going on such a hot day, anyway?" Mr. Cooper Cantrell asked.

"Aw, I was takin' this young 'un to visit Cousin Mayhew Duke."

"Lord God, Miss Virgie! Mayhew moved to Birmingham forty years ago. Nobody lives in Acker Corners no more." Mr. Cooper Cantrell was grinning now.

"Course, I remember it," Grandma said, "I was taking her to see where they used to live." She snapped her lips together tight and folded her arms across her bosom. 

When we drove up, Mama, Daddy, Cabby, and all the dogs came running out to greet us. "Thank God," Mama said. "We've scoured the place looking for you." I jumped down and bounced on my rubber-soled sandals. "Where have you been, you dirty little pissant?" Cabby said and looked me up and down. I knew I was going to get it for being so dirty. But Mama hugged me and said come on in and eat. She said I wouldn't have to eat purple-hull peas after all - I could have tomato sandwiches on light bread and crisp-fried eggplant and lemonade and frozen custard for dessert. "Can I stir a little bourbon in my custard this time? My nerves are shot." She and Daddy laughed and said, "We'll see." 

Then I said to Cabby, "You needn't be so smart and mean. You're just jealous because you haven't saved anybody's life and now I've saved Grandma's life twice. Today, and that time she put her hand in the electric fan and I wrapped it in a towel real tight and ran all the way to the little place to get Mama and Daddy." Cabby rolled her eyes at me. After dinner, Grandma and me took a long nap in the cool of the hall. "Well, I don't reckon I'll ever see Cousin Mayhew and Estelle now." "No'm" I whispered, as I fell into sleep remembering how it felt to be high up in that road grader in the afternoon July sun, "reckon we'll have to do without that peach ice cream, but that bourbon in my custard was good."

"Lord, God, she'll be a drunkard. Mark my words." 

Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss ca. 1987-89 ©

This is another of the stories that Mama typed up between 1987 and 1989. My apologies for the story using the "N" word a good bit. I didn't want to change it because that is how they really talked, unfortunately - I hope you will enjoy the story anyway...

I do not know why Milt was terrorized by the Klan. I know that my great-grandfather was killed by the Klan for selling land to black people. Virgie, Milt's mother, routinely delivered babies in the black community, and it is likely that Milt showed some kindness to that community as well 

pictured - Rubel Moss in the cap, Henry the Mule, and Charlie Moss

Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss

My daddy was among the three youngest of sixteen children, except that only thirteen of them lived to grow up. Grandma Moss, who had been Virgie Duke, always spoke of the tiny still-born twin boys who were buried at Greenbriar Cemetery in a common grave under twin heart-shaped headstones with grief and longing.  Somehow her hopes seemed to be in those identical boy babies who never saw the light. But the one she fretted over the most was Ira Green Moss. He was named for old Dr. Walden, a country doctor who traversed the muddy roads of Monroe County in North Mississippi delivering babies, black and white, and shaking his head over children strangling to death with Diptheria or heaving to death with whooping cough. Their tiny doomed graves speckle Greenbriar Cemetery even now. Almost every family, black or white, had an Ira Green in it somewhere. Grandma said her Ira Green was a child especially blessed with second sight. She knew this because he was born with a caul over his face, "And I'll tell you what else, that little thing never had a chance for a normal life because his heartbeat on the wrong side. Yes, sir, that little thing's heart was where his lungs was supposed to be. I don't know where his lungs was though, but many a time the little thing would just struggle to draw breath." Then, when Ira Green was five, Grandma said, "He just taken sick late one evening in April. That very day he looked out across the field and said how pretty the young cotton looked where it had been fresh-plowed-- he said it looked just like it had been starched and ironed and I give him berry pie and ice cream for supper. Then he just taken sick and was gone before day. I knowed then that the Mosses was doomed."

So Grandma's best hopes perished early in those three tiny graves way at the back of the cemetery near the woods. I used to find the tiny blackened stones when I was a child and ponder whether or not those little children, my kin, could watch me all the way from heaven.

But even with Ira Green and the twins dead, Grandma still had four fine sons, not to mention all that gang of gals. Her sons were Milton, Hezekiah, Charles, and Rubel. Milt was the oldest and had already achieved a kind of sainthood by the time I could remember because everybody said that he had "worked himself to death." Perhaps he did. My aunts and uncles used to talk about how he would light a lantern and clear new ground all night long - just like he had gone crazy. My daddy always said that was the reason Milt went blind, but my aunt said no - it was because he forgot the Lord. Aunt Maggie said, "When Milt set in to plow on Sunday when the Lord has strictly bidden us to remember His day and keep it holy, well, then and there the Lord decided Milt had done went too far." My daddy said, "Well, you may be right, but I'm gone tell you one thing and it's the God's truth. The old nigger woman they called Calacie brought Milt's sight back to him. I know - for I seen it."

None of the relatives at the Sunday dinner table believed a word of it; they said and went on chomping chicken and dumplings. "Rubel", Aunt Maggie said, "You ought not to talk such stuff on the Sabbath. Think of them children. They say old Calacie is a witch. Why Edna Betts works at the Amory Hospital and says on Saturday night they'll bring in grown niggers, mostly men, lying stiff as a corpse and swearin' that Calacie has hoodooed them." 

My daddy said he didn't give a cuss about no hoodoo but that he had seen Uncle Milt's eyesight restored himself. "She just stood there with her hand on his shoulder, all clutchin' like, and her eyes closed tight and her lips drawed back from all them gold teeth and mumbled some of them hoodoo words and Milt said to me, "By God, Jack, I can see." (My daddy's name was Rubel but his folks all called him Jack.) But then Calacie commenced to whine in a high sing-song voice that sounded 'bout like a screech owl and then she said, "But, white man, you have no faith in the dark power and the vision will fade." And then Milt said, "You damn right I ain't got no faith in no damn dark hoodoo power." And then my daddy said Uncle Milt couldn't see no more nor ever again,  And my daddy said, "Milt just give up after that and went down and went down and died."

But Grandma Moss said, "Humph, it was that trashy second wife of his that brought him down - her and that passel of younguns. Milt said she was so lazy she wouldn't even get up and fix them children a decent breakfast. But her folks was shiftless like that. They would lay up and eat store-boughten vittles with the finest garden spot in the county with nothing planted but a few scrawny greens. Milt would have been alive and prosperous today if Carrie hadn't up and died on him like she did."

Our family would only be friends with Uncle Milt's first set of children -- Leo, Mary, and another Ira Green were all the children of a fine woman from a good family with Uncle Milt. But when Carrie died after Mary's birth, Uncle Milt married beneath himself, Grandma always said. So none of the Mosses wanted to have much to do with Bessie Allred's brood, especially when Uncle Milt died and left them all. Some people say Bessie supported them all being nothin' more than a public woman but she pretended to sew for a living. My daddy always sent them money every fall after he had sold his cotton crop. He said that was little enough to do for poor Milt's kids. One time when I was about six years old, we were having a big Sunday dinner for my big brother, James Russell, who was home from Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. All my aunts and uncles gathered to see Rubel's boy handsome and smart in his Eisenhower jacket. We thought he would soon be going to Korea to fight the communists but he only had to go to San Antonio, Texas. Mama said it was a shame too because that's where he met a catholic woman, a grass widow with a child. Mama never did get over it, but the woman had the priest say a mass for Mama's soul when she died. So that time the daughter-in-law had the last word on religion but she never did get my brother to become catholic himself.  Anyway, that Sunday, I was sitting up in my favorite pecan tree reading my favorite book because it was only one of two that I had - - Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. About the time that Kay is getting kidnapped by the evil and icily beautiful snow queen, a big truck full of strangers came lumbering down the driveway. They said they were from Arkansas. I counted twelve altogether and hightailed it in the backdoor to tell Mama. "They's twelve people from Arkansas out front," I announced full of importance, "They say they're kinfolks and have come all that way just to eat dinner with us." Mama had a pie server in her hand as she was serving fancy jello salads onto a platter; a recipe in McCall's Magazine told how to make them. Mama said the magazine said it was a cool and refreshing way to eat in the summer. The pie server paused only a moment before Mama sighed and began cutting the salads in half. "Lord, Lord," she said, "just give me strength to get through it and hope there won't be no Sunday dinners in heaven." Then she told my sister to break the ears of corn in half. And then she mumbled something about Jesus, loaves and fishes, and multitudes.

These kinfolks turned out to be some of Uncle Milt's second batch of children. They also had a handsome young man in a uniform with an Eisenhower jacket. My daddy called him "Little Milt" because he was Milton, Jr. and because he looked so much like his daddy. Not long after those kinfolks went back to Arkansas, we heard that Little Milt had been killed in Korea, but Uncle Milt's other son, Ira Green, from the first batch, lived a long time until one day a bulldozer crushed him to death. My daddy said it was because Ira inherited Uncle Milt's stinginess and wouldn't buy a proper ramp for unloading the bulldozer but tried to get it off the truck by rolling it down a couple of logs. My daddy said Ira had turned totally black by the time they finally got him out and that it was a tribute to Guy Pickel, the town undertaker, that Ira made such a good-looking corpse after all of that. Uncle Milt's line is healthy, though. Ira Green had a son himself, Ira Green, Jr. who runs a motel in Hattiesburg and has four sons growing up.

My Aunt Inez said it wasn't hard work or witches or wives that killed Milt. She said he never was the same after them murdering, thieving Ku Klux broke in his house and beat him up and stole his money and burned the cross out in front of his house and scared the children to death. She said that experience just soured Milt besides the injury to his head had caused him to go blind. She said Milt said it was a shame that a man could work so hard just to have worthless trash like that break in on him and terrorize him and his family. She said one of the Ku Klux had hit him with a stick of stove wood and that's what made him go blind. But no matter the way, poor Uncle Milt went to his grave and him not even forty years old. So that's what happened to Milt, Virgie's oldest boy.

Grandma Moss thought Hez would be all right because he was so big and tough. She said Hez was the sweetest thing the way he would pick up his little brother Ira Green and tote him around the farm to watch the comical guinea hens and hunt their eggs. All the girls around Amory had been after Hez when he got back from World War I because he looked so handsome in uniform, but Granma said Hez loved his mother the best and took no interest in those little fool girls like Janie Williams that was always runnin' after him. Hez did like to gamble and brag about how strong he was and how much work he could do and he drank whiskey some too. That's when he got into fights. "Remember," Grandma said, "Hez always called himself Pig-Iron Pete and bragged they wasn't nobody in Monroe County that could whoop him."  "By God," Daddy said, "that was nigh the truth, too. And eat - Hez could out-eat anybody. Remember that Fourth of July when Hez won that contest for eating the most homemade ice cream? That was the time he beat Whit Whitaker. 'Course Whit would have won, but he'd taken sick. Dr. Walden said Whit had froze his stomach from eatin' so much ice cream and that it was a thousand wonders that he didn't die right then. Dr. Walden said any fool that would eat enough ice cream to freeze his stomach ought to die." 

But Grandma and all of them said it was a shame that Hez didn't find a good decent girl to settle him down. Mama said it was too bad he had that Simms girl living in the house with him. Mama said she talked to the girl herself and told her she and Hez should marry because folks was talkin' but the girl said her folks was too poor to feed her and she needed someplace to stay and Hez took her in and she cooked for him. And Hez said, by God, he didn't want a wife but when the sheriff came to lock him up, he said it was a shame that an honest man couldn't even hire himself a cook. But after that, Mama and Daddy ran off and got married, and they lived with Uncle Hez. Mama said Uncle Hez always bragged on her and said she made the best biscuits of anybody and the best banana pudding and the best fried chicken and fried okra. Grandma Moss got jealous then and said that, by Ned, Daisy ought to make good biscuits, chicken, and vegetables because she herself had learned her everything she knowed about cooking a good meal and getting it on the table.

They said during that time, after Grandpa Moss had died one night right around midnight my Uncle Charles took off for St. Louis. People said he had gone wild listening to nigger boogey-woogey music. They said he even played a bass fiddle himself in an after-hours speakeasy joint and watched women do the shimmy and the shake. Clarence Bright even told around the county that Charles had taken up with a girl no better than a common public woman, And everybody said it was too bad that Charles had run off and left only Hez and Rubel to help Virgie Moss with all that gang of gals to raise. They said Charlie had gone to barbers' school and made his living cutting hair and spent the rest of his time dancing the Charleston and listening to Handy's dirty boogey-woogey music and blues. One of the Duke boys went off up there to see him and said it was all true and that Charlie never even went to church and would even cut hair on the side on Sundays. In fact, Herbert Duke said that Sunday was the biggest day because Charlie would cut the gangsters' hair on that day, and they gave him flashy tips because they had so much money from selling illegal whiskey. Herbert said Charlie even had a tap-dancing job at a local show. That may even be true because I once saw Uncle Charlie do a tap dance on the front porch. The preacher was shocked that Uncle Charlie would dance at all, much less at his mother's house on a Sunday. But my daddy never did forgive Charlie for running off to St. Louis. He said it over and over again; the litany came even the night he died, "Papa made his way back to the house after the Ku Klux left him to die in that ditch filthy and chilled to the bone that January night. He died that night before midnight just a-freezin' to death after I built him the best fire I knowed how and then Charlie run off to St. Louis and Mama sendin' all them worthless lazy gals to school with just me to do it all -- the milkin', the plowin', the hoeing, the layin-by, cutting all the wood and all. Hell, I didn't get no education because Charlie run off and them girls was spoilt. I just never had no chance, don't you see?"

But Uncle Hez was good to Mama and Daddy. Mama told how he would always buy oranges and coconut on Christmas and how he'd brag on Mama's coconut cake and how moist it was so it melted in your mouth. "That's because I learned her how to pour the coconut milk on the layers," Grandma said. Mama said it was worth it all to hear Hez laugh and slap his knee when they told stories and popped corn before the fire in the winter. He liked to tease Mama about the time my daddy scared her hiccoughs away by yelling, "Watch out for that kangaroo nest!" Hez laughed and asked if she thought them durn kangaroos would have done hopped all the way across the Pacific Ocean and across California, and Texas and all just to set up housekeepin in her kitchen! My daddy said that fall when Uncle Hez died that they had the biggest cotton crop they'd ever had. He said Hez was feelin' good about it. Hez and a no-account fellow named Suggs had gone to unload a wagon of cotton in the cotton house. The way Suggs told it, Hez had climbed up on the wagon, grabbed the biggest and heaviest sack and pitched off the wagon dead. Later Mama said that she dreamed Hez come to her and said, "Yes,sir, Daisy, that son-of-a-bitch Suggs robbed me. He took that twelve hundred dollars and me layin dead and helpless. By God, Daisy, that Suggs fellow took my money. And everybody thought this was so, but couldn't prove it, especially when Suggs left Monroe County not long after that. Mama said she had that dream for years. She reckoned when she stopped having that dream that Suggs had died himself. and Hez somehow got even with him on the other side.

Mama said the night Hezzie lay a corpse, that Grandma Moss lay in the bed and cried and said it was all her fault that Hez had dropped dead and him not even thirty-six years old. "Yes, sir, Daisy, I as good as took a gun and shot him in the head. If your boy wants to marry when he is seventeen years old, don't you say a word to stop him." Then Grandma told Mama how Hez had loved a girl named Mayrene Myatt. She had to go off to Texas with her folks but she had promised to marry Hez. Hez said write me and as soon as I sell my cotton crop, I'll send you the money to come back and we'll get married. Grandma said she didn't like the Myatts and thought Mayrene just wanted to trick Hez out of the money to marry somebody else, so she took all the letters when they came and burned them. Hez never did even know Mayrene had written at all. He thought she had just taken off to Texas and forgot him. That's when he commenced to drinkin' and gamblin' and quit going to church. "Yes, sir, Daisy, he was as good a boy as you'll ever see, and I just the same as shot him."

They buried Uncle Hez with his WWI uniform on and soldiers came to play the bugle over his grave and fire shots over it, and the government draped a flag over his casket and then two soldiers folded it and gave it to Grandma Moss. I used to see it in her big wardrobe smelling like mothballs. She kept it in with all the nightgowns she wanted to be buried in, but the moths and the mice ate it up in the end. When Grandma Moss died, we found a shred of that flag at the bottom of the trunk.

Long after his death, I'd play near his grave and talk to him and remember him even though I had never seen him. He was a corporal, the tombstone said. "That was something," I thought, "a corporal!" The stone said he was gone but not forgotten. "That's true" I whispered, "I remember you, Uncle Hez, I remember you better than anybody."

After Uncle Hez had pitched off the cotton wagon with a heart attack and all the gang of gals had married off or got settled off in Kentucky with my Aunt Lou, who had educated herself to be a college teacher, Charlie came on back from St. Louis, married a fine girl, bought a farm, and settled down. But he still cut hair on Sundays instead of going to church, and once, James Reed Harmon, the county sheriff, had to arrest him for being a damn shadetree barber, said he wasn't allowed by the law to cut hair even on Sunday without proper papers and such. But Uncle Charlie would still tap dance and cut up on the front porch sometimes. My daddy said that was one good thing Charlie got from St. Louis; he said that there wasn't many families that had somebody that could cut hair and tap dance both.

"It didn't come from my side"

I'm the one in the yellow shirt - I look normal, don't I?

Grandmama and Granddaddy Pierce moved from Memphis, TN to Topsail Island, NC when I was six or so. I don't really remember as much about the house in Kingsley Cove as far as the bedrooms go. I remember the kitchen, the living room, and the family room. Often, I would sleep on the pullout sofa in the living room when I was there - I suppose Pam slept with me but my memory of my childhood is no match for how my own mother remembered hers.

What I do know is that the kitchen was right off the living room, and I suspect that I slept there instead of in a bedroom because I liked to get up early with my granddaddy to eat breakfast. The invitation for bacon, over-easy eggs, orange juice, and toast with butter and honey was open to everyone who was willing to get up when he did. I was the only taker and as such, I guess Grandmama put me in the living room so I wouldn't wake up the rest of the house getting up. Granddaddy could move silently, but I had trouble doing so as a kid. 

Granddaddy liked for me to wait to get up until he had started making breakfast. Once I heard the bacon sizzle, I would rise, go wash my hands, and sit at the table patiently while we chatted and he cooked breakfast. I learned a lot about my granddaddy from these talks. God knows, Grandmama never let him speak with her constant narration of life as it happened. I learned that the prettiest thing he ever saw was when he would watch the chemicals being dumped into the river when he worked at Monsanto Chemical Company. He said the river turned all the colors of the rainbow. I learned that his favorite place in the world was Havana. He said it was the best vacation he ever had just before Americans were not allowed to go to Cuba anymore. I learned that he went blind for a while because he studied by oil lamp and was beaten by his father for doing so. And I learned that he loved to garden, tinker with his car, study science, and make jokes about my grandmother. Mostly, I learned that I loved him and he really loved me.  He could do no wrong in my eyes and he called me his pet. They say the most important thing that people remember about you is how you made them feel, and Granddaddy made me feel loved. 

Grandmama was a different story. She was embarrassed by me. To be more specific, she was embarrassed by the fact that I have epilepsy. She once said to a stranger in line in front of us at the grocery store  "This is my granddaughter, she has epilepsy. She looks normal, doesn't she?" I was horrified, even though I was only five or so.  

I got other signals from the adults in my life that having epilepsy was strange. Mama and Daddy both assured me that I would always have a home with them since I probably would not be able to work as an adult. They had both known people who had epilepsy when they were growing up. Reportedly, these people had not been able to hold down jobs or have families, but other than that, my parents assured me, they lived normal lives. It seemed to me that working and having a family was how one lived a normal life. 

I got signals at school, too, that epilepsy was strange and embarrassing. It was not easy marching up to my teacher's desk every day just before lunch to get my medicine with whispers all around me. I would make my lonely trip to the water fountain to take my Dilantin and Phenobarbital. In first grade, and throughout elementary school, some children were not allowed to play with me because their parents were afraid that their child would catch epilepsy from me. It happened to me so often that I got to where I would let people know right off the bat and have them check with their parents to see if it was okay if they played with me. I didn't want to get attached to a friend who couldn't be my friend anymore.

The most devastating event for me concerning my feelings about having epilepsy happened one night as I lay on that sofabed in Grandmama's Memphis home on Kingsley Cove. I never have slept well. Mama and Grandmama were in the kitchen and they never really got along. I think that Grandmama liked to upset my mother. She liked to upset all of the women in the lives of her sons and grandson. She wanted to be the most important woman in their lives. That night, they were apparently talking about the fact that epilepsy is genetic. "Well, if it's genetic." Grandmama insisted "it didn't come from my side of the family. No one in my family has ever had epilepsy." Mama retorted, "No one in my family ever had it either; it did not come from my side." This debate continued without resolution. I listened intently while tears streamed down my plump cheeks. I have never before or since felt like such an outcast. I felt that both sides of my family were ashamed of me and there was no way I could change it. To this day, that conversation haunts me. But they finally went to bed, and I finally went to sleep, and do you know something? The next morning, I got up with my granddaddy and he made me eggs and bacon and toast with butter and honey. He beamed at me and told me stories of his youth and he made me feel loved again.

Years later when I told this story to my mother, she denied it ever happened. But I know that it did, and I know that it hurt, and I know that many others have been similarly hurt by their families. But still, we love our families, and we endure. We live with our challenges, We overcome our challenges. My parents generous offer to always provide me a home made me determined to work and have a family and live a normal life. Not normal for an epileptic - just normal, or as close as I could get. Do any of us truly achieve or even know exactly what normal is?

Incidentally, my genealogy uncovered the death record of my great-grandfather James Fears, Grandmama's father. Guess what he died from - an epileptic seizure. So, I guess it did come from your side, Grandmama. Not that it matters in the least.