Everlasting Gifts

Up until the age of nineteen, my best friend in the world, was an amazing woman by the name of Bertha Marie Wamboldt.  She hated the name Bertha, so everyone called her Marie.  I called her,  Nanny.  I am sure there aren’t alot of people out there who would claim their grandmother as their best friend, but I truly did.  Some of my earliest and fondest memories, are of times I spent with Nanny, or on the phone with her.  She blessed me with a few very important, and life-long gifts.  I want to share just a couple,  tonight.

It may not be a great surprise to many of you, but I love to talk.  I learned to speak rather young, and I fear, once I started, it has been a chore to keep from doing it.  When I was very young, my Dad went away with the military, to an 11 month position in Africa.  I was 3 at the time, my brother barely a year, and my mother didn’t drive.  I don’t remember actually seeing my grandmother often during that time, but I do remember the great conversations we had on the phone.  We went on great adventures together, and I honestly believe the first great gift she gave me, was the development of a fantastic imagination.  I always had a great attention span, and we spent an abundance of time on the telephone, throughout all of my childhood.  I can very vividly recall a safari we went one on day.  You need to understand that Nanny was beautiful to me.  I don’t believe she stood 5 feet, and she was nearly as big around.  When she sat in her rocking chair, there wasn’t much lap left over, but she managed to find room for us.  This particular day, when we were roaming the plains and jungles of Africa, Nanny and I decided to trade elephants, and she took my baby one, and we laughed about how she would be too big,  and squish him!  Not an exciting, life altering memory, but as clear as if it were yesterday.  We told such great stories together.

Throughout my childhood, and into my teens, except for the years I lived in British Columbia, and the ones I spent on a base in Germany, I talked to my grandmother,  very nearly, daily.  The topics changed and grew as I did, but I was always able to talk to, and confide in Nanny, far better than anyone else in my life.  I shared things with her I never shared with anyone.  I remember when fake leather pants became all the rage, I wanted a pair, and so did my grandmother!  She told me, if she where much smaller, she’d have a pair for sure.  I, of course know that she was greatly exaggerating her desire to put herself in those pants, but I loved her for telling me, basically, that she understood.  She was my support, always.

Jump ahead a few years, and just after my 18th birthday, while my father was away on a trip with the Coast Guard, I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son.  My mother was devastated, and didn’t know how to deal with the news, alone, so the first night, my grandfather came and picked us up to spend the night with them.  That was the only time in my life my grandmother ever expressed any disappointment in me.  She was not upset that I was having a baby, and that my life path had now greatly changed, but she was hurt that I hadn’t confided in her the possibility that I was pregnant.  We talked about everything else, and I had carried the burden alone for three months.  How supportive and unselfish was that?

Here’s where things get dicey.  Somewhere in the next 6 months, I am not entirely sure when, but Nanny was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.  She had been treated for years and years, incorrectly, with gall bladder trouble, and we have always wondered, if the outcome would have been hugely different had it been caught much sooner.  We will never know.  As I grew bigger and bigger, she grew weaker and weaker.  A month before I ended up giving birth to Daniel, she had surgery to remove a  large portion of her small bowel, and, as is often the case, things ended up spreading.  I can distinctly remember going into her hopsital room, and she and I commiserated about our discomfort from our abdominal incisions, mine from an emergency c-section, hers from surgery.  I smiled just now thinking about it.

Once home from the hospital, my amazing grandmother, when I came to visit her, sat in her rocking chair and told me I needed to do something for her.  Her belief was that every child needed to be rocked to be properly nutured, and she asked me if I had a rocking chair for my son.  I didn’t.  You need to understand, that my grandmother never had money, except what was left from the milk delivery man.  My grandfather gave her a certain amount of money every week for milk and cream and such, and anything left, was hers.  Nanny saved it all, and there was always a new pair of jammies, or some other gift for Christmas, from her own money.  Well, this particuloar day, she handed me a hundred dollars, and told me to get my baby a rocking chair.  She told me not to tell anyone where the money came from, and I never did, until she had passed away.  The chair is still in my garage.  It needs to be rebuilt, and reupholstered, but I still have it.  That was another amazingly incredible gift she gave me, and as the years progressed, my children.

Now, one of Nanny’s biggest hardships during this time, was that her incision never healed and she could never actually hold Daniel without someone helping her and supporting his weight.  That was fine, and we did it willingly, but as she got sicker, and had to return to hospital, she refused to see my son, or my cousin’s son either.  My beautiful, loving, Nanny knew she wasn’t going to live long enough to see these babies grow, and it broke her weakening heart to see them.  The day she passed, was the saddest of my life, to date.  She was truly one of the greatest women I have ever, or will ever know, and my biggest hero.

There is one other gift she gave me that is truly a double edged sword.  My grandmother lived between where I lived and where I did  most my errands.  I still feel saddened to this day when I drive by her house, and think of the number of times I drove by and didn’t stop.  I always thought I would just do it next time.  Well, there isn’t always going to BE a next time.    I am going to leave you with this thought.  I do not believe in regret.  I don’t regret anything that has happened to me in this life.  I am not proud of everything I have done or all the decisions I have made, but I don’t regret them.  That being said, I make sure that I tell the people in my life, as often as I can, that I love them.  You never know when you will not have the opportunity.  I will never be the person who regrets not saying I Love You.  People in our lives need to know they are special to us, and I challenge you to look into yourself, and ask yourself, would someone in your life know how you feel, if you walked out of their life today, and something terrible happened.  That is the greatest gift my Nanny gave to me.  Pass it on.