For Granny

With October 12th rolling around quickly my mind has been thinking of my Granny Mary even more than usual. Instead of once or twice a day it's now once every few hours. Usually I shove the memories away but with me being blind I find myself not wanting to quite as much.

The heartbreak over her being gone? Yes.

The emptiness and hole in my heart from her no longer being around? You betcha.

But the fond memories of her talking to me about what it was like to grow up half "black" half Cherokee Indian? Of growing up in the South during the time of sharecroppers, legalized racism (you know the blatant kind, not the subversive stuff we have today), of girls getting married and having babies at the tender age of fourteen with their husbands who were in their mid-to late twenties? No.

I miss my Granny. I hear her voice in the wind, smell her perfume and her chewing tobacco at the oddest moments. Sometimes I even fool myself into believing that I can feel her brushing my cheek or touching my hand.

She accepted me when I came out to her. She told me that YHVH had created and called me to change the world. She implored me to take care of my family because they needed me "whether they know it or not."

I've been singing her favorite hymnals, been having cravings for her favorite foods (fried chicken, cornbread, greens, yams, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas and sweet potato pie) and more than that I have felt an almost desperate need to take some time and make sure I have everything typed up, planned out and ready to go for my group home, charities, and human rights programs. Granny Mary, affectionately named "Granny Panny" and "Granny Pantyhose" by yours truly was the one I talked to about these things, even when the Alzheimer's she fought with made her unable to remember most of her life. She never forgot me though and she always encouraged me.

She loved me.

And I loved her.

I still love her.

So I'm preparing to start school and I'm writing and learning to adapt to being blind and I can hear Granny Panny telling me that "being blind don't give you a free pass to not do what you were born to do, it just means that you gotta get a little creative while you doing it."

So I'm going to get creative and by the time the anniversary of her passing rolls around I'm going to be able to say "See Granny? It's done and ready, now you just gotta bring the right folks to me so that we can get it started."

I love you Granny. Always and forever,


Your great-grandson,

"Karaoke"
Vicktor