Great grandmom became too ill to continue living with us or to help care for me just after my first year of school. Other than the amusement of our silly arguments in which I taunted the poor woman, she was kind to me and she was there so I wasn’t by myself especially in the mornings and when I got home for school. I wish she had shared with me why giving me the gift of a Bible was so important to her. She never said anything about it that I recall but she beamed with pride and happiness when she presented it to me. I’m glad that I still have her gift after all the years.
The last time I saw Great grandmom was when my mother took me to visit at one of her son’s homes. She was lying in a bed and relatives were standing around in the room. Great grandmom kept repeating that she wanted to jump in the river. I don’t know if she was in pain and imagined that a river of water would soothe her or whether she was seeing some sort of river in her own mind’s eye. This was the only time I saw what used to be commonplace- a family member dying at home.
Nowadays it is rare that anyone dies in their own home. It happens in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices but rarely in a home. It’s the same with birth. People used to be born and die sometimes in the same house and even the same room. Those days in America are long gone. While it is fantastic that we have so much life saving methods available in our modern world something is lost. We are shielded from death and it has become a culturally taboo topic as sex once was. When people observed birth and death as part of life from childhood I think they gave more consideration to the fragility of life and the reality of their own mortality.
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