Grandma Meredith Dies

Grandma Meredith Dies

It was the summer of 1944. I had just turned nine years old a few months earlier. I heard the phone ring while I was in bed. Dad answered it quickly, attempting to keep from disturbing everyone who was sleeping. The call was from Dad’s father, my Grandpa Meredith. I only remember hushed voices between Dad and Mom after he put the phone down. “It’s Mom, she’s pretty bad off. Dad thinks I need to come,” Dad told Mom.

            “Is she going to make it?” I heard Mom ask.
            “Doesn’t sound like it,” Dad replied. I heard our old Chevrolet fire up and indicate Dad was leaving the house.
            A couple of hours later the phone rang again. By this time it was early morning and I jumped out of bed. Mom told me Grandma Meredith had just died. I broke down and cried my eyes out.
            Nobody would ever understand the relationship I had with my dear Grandma Meredith. I never loved anyone more than I loved her. Let me tell you why. During the summers when school was out, it was common for me to spend a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa at their Grand Avenue home in Decatur. For whatever reason, Grandma Meredith wanted me to come and stay with them for days on end, often for two or three weeks. While there, Grandpa worked at the Grand Avenue Cleaners establishment, so Grandma and I would do some cooking, go downtown to shop, and generally just hang out together. I learned a whole lot about life from that wonderful woman. She was a peach in every way.
            Every Saturday that I stayed with her would be an adventure for me. We went to the Seventh Day Adventist Church a couple of blocks from her house, and after church we would ride the bus downtown. Grandma just never ever wanted to miss church, although I do remember a few times she was too ill to go. The bus stopped for us at the bus stop on the corner of Edward and Grand, less than a half-block from her house at 419 West Grand. We generally got off at Main and North Streets and walked the one block up to North Main Street. For whatever reason, Grandma loved the Walgreens store just a block north of Central Park on Water Street, so that is where we would have a light lunch. Grandma always bought me a big old chocolate milkshake before we left. Other than lunch and a milkshake, I no longer remember what else we shopped for, but she always had some little thing she had to get.
            I remember helping Grandma make bread and noodles with homemade dumplings. She always let me roll out the dough and cut the biscuits out, plus she always allowed me to do the dropping of the dumplings into the noodle broth. It made me feel like I was a really big help to her. I will never forget once when she made me a sandwich for lunch. It was the most delicious thing I ever ate. I loved the meat and I always asked her to put mustard on it for me. Well, that sandwich was so good I asked if I could have a second one. She marched right into the kitchen and pulled out a platter from the old icebox (she didn’t own a refrigerator at that time) and set it on the table. She uncovered it and started to slice me some meat for a sandwich. It nearly made me gag. “Grandma, what is that?” I asked.
            “It’s beef tongue,” she replied.
            “Yuck, I can’t eat any of that,” I told her.
            “Well now, Sonny, you’ve already been eating it most of your life, as well as just a few minutes ago. You told me then that you loved it.”
            I ran into the bathroom and almost threw up (maybe I did throw up, although I have long since forgotten). Grandma followed me to make sure I was not going to be too sick. I guess I got past the horrible image of that big old cow tongue on that platter, although there are times when I still remember that horrible day when I discovered what I had been eating.
            It was much later when I discovered that not only had I eaten that cow tongue, but also chitterlings. I never knew what they were either, but once when I saw her cooking them while burning a brown paper grocery bag on top of the stove, I asked. I know for certain I threw up when she told me about those horrible things I had eaten at her house many times. Every single time I ate there after learning about chitterlings and cow tongue, I always asked for identification of what I was about to eat.
            Grandma had a window box where she kept her butter and milk in the winter. She could only get ice for the icebox delivered in the summer months, so Grandpa Meredith had built her a way to open the kitchen window and store her spoilable food items outside. I know Mom also had one that Dad had built for her. She also kept all her leftover meat in the window box when it was cold outside. Most of the time Grandma purchased her food things daily. Scanlon’s Super Market was less than a hundred feet from her front door.

Grandma always wore a head covering wrapped around her head that she fashioned from a scarf. I never saw her without it. One day I asked her, “Grandma, why do you always have that thing on your head?”

            She told it was to keep her head warm, even in the summer. Being a stupid young kid, I bought her answer without question. It wasn’t until after she died that I learned she had suffered from cancer of the head for several years. She wore the scarf head covering to hide the cancer from sight of those around her.

The day of Grandma Meredith’s funeral, I wanted to go to it. Until then I had never experienced seeing anyone dead. Mom and Dad thought I was too young to go to the services, so they left us with one of my aunts, maybe it was Aunt Vade, although I forget who for sure. I had heard Mom and Dad talking and I learned Grandma was to be buried in Fairlawn Cemetery, a cemetery I was very familiar with due to making so many trips through it to get to the Duck Pond at Fairview Park where many of the neighborhood boys went to fish. I told Aunt Vade I was going down to play with one of my friends, but in secret I was going to go to the cemetery to see if I could find out where Grandma was to be buried.

            I scurried down Taylor Street, over to Dennis Street all the way to the cemetery. I climbed over the fence and walked just a short distance over the train tracks to where I saw a tent canopy erected and many cars pulling into the area. Almost immediately I saw Uncle Harley’s big old green Studebaker pull in. He had taken Mom and Dad to the services. I sneaked my way to within about half a block or so, where I hid behind some evergreen trees and some bushes. From there I could hear the preacher from Grandma’s church say some words of prayer in a loud voice, and then everybody started crying. I waited there until the service was over and all the people left. Two men came and lowered Grandma’s box down to the bottom of the hole and they started throwing shovels of dirt on top of her box.
            I cried all the way home and for several hours afterward. I had not only lost my dear Grandma Meredith, but also my very best friend. I had bad dreams about her funeral for a number of years after that. Even today, I still think how those two guys threw dirt on her grave, as well as a few cigarette butts they smoked. I remember them laughing as they worked, while I sat on the hillside crying.

Years later at the age of eighteen, I learned I was adopted. It came to light that my dad wasn’t really my real dad at all, which also meant that Grandma Meredith wasn’t my real grandma at all. For many years I wondered why she would treat me so much better than any of the other Meredith kids. None of them ever stayed with her like I did. She had always treated me special, and she had to know I wasn’t really her grandson, not by blood anyway.

            I guess it must have been that she never saw me as a substitute grandson, or maybe she wanted to show me special love because I had this big problem looming ahead of me that I would someday discover. I don’t know why she showed me so much attention, so much more than the other kids. But I do know I had such a special love for her that even today I can’t adequately describe it. I can still cry when I recall the times I spent with her. I just never let anyone see me doing it.

If ever an angel walked the earth, Gertrude Lance Meredith was that angel. The special memory of her will live with me to my grave.

Paul R. Meredith

Date: Unknown