8 minute read
MOUNTAIN MAGIC with Ann Hite
MOUNTAIN MAGIC with Ann Hite
The Last Goodbye
Well my friends, it is time for a ghost story. The month of October just demands it. I have decided on a true haint story. I like to think this isn’t just a haint story but a tale of true love. The kind of love that exists between a grandmother and her granddaughter. When a loved one reaches back through the veil to say her last goodbye. This is a tale of soul learning that my granny would be right proud I was telling. This is the description of what really happened the day of Granny’s funeral.
But to get there, I have to back up a couple of days to ground you in the events leading up to Granny’s passing. The very day she died but some hours earlier. I was at the hospital with Jack—the man who would become my husband—where he had a procedure. Granny was in a room up the hall from his. She had been in the hospital for two weeks. On the day she was admitted, I was there helping her get settled. I did not come back. Why? Because that day she threw a fit for me to take her out of the hospital. Her nurse asked me to leave so Granny could settle down. I was crushed. This was my beloved granny and even though we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, I loved her with my whole heart. When I was ten, Granny made me promise I would never make her stay somewhere she didn’t want to be when she turned too old to take care of herself.
The doctor refused to sign release papers. Granny was slowly starving herself. Her ever-worsening eyesight had grown so bad she could no longer hide her blindness. Mother had moved Granny in with her, but Granny wanted no part of living with her daughter. She wanted nothing more than to die. At eighty-four, she thought she had the right to make that choice. The doctor explained that if I took her from the hospital, I would be held responsible for her death. I was thirty-six and the last thing I wanted to hear was the word death. I left the hospital.
That afternoon as I waited on Jack to be released from the hospital, I found the courage to go see Granny in her room. Mother had kept me up on her deteriorating condition. What if she screamed when she heard me come in the room? Guilt and grief ate away at me.
I stood in the door of her hospital room. A new nurse was looking at the machines hooked up to Granny. This isn’t what Granny wanted. This was what she was afraid of when she made me make that promise so many years before.
The nurse looked at me. “Mrs. Lord hasn’t had any visitors in over a week. I’m glad to see you here.”
“I’m her granddaughter.”
Granny lay with the tubes hooked up to her. Her eyes closed.
“She is in an unconscious state. Not quite a coma but headed that way. The tube to her stomach is feeding her.”
My strong granny was defenseless to the blindness that stole her world, her independence.
“She keeps calling two names: Bertha and Annie.”
My heart raced. “Bertha was a sister who died when they were both young girls. I am Annie.”
The nurse wore a look as if I answered all her questions, as if she knew the old Appalachian belief that one near death called out to those who had past on and those they had unfinished business with.
“You talk to her.” The nurse patted my arm as she headed to the door. “She can hear every word you say.”
When the nurse left the room, I went to Granny’s bedside. The rhythm of the machines filled the air. I touched her paper-thin skin. When was the last time we had a good long talk? I knew. I knew she had we had words when I divorced. She couldn’t accept that verbal and mental abuse drove me to find a different life. Abuses that often took place in front of her without comment. Her silence had grown like a flooding river between us, washing away our closeness but not our deep love.
There I stood deciding what to say that could build a bridge before it was too late. “Granny, I’m here.”
Her eyelids moved.
“I came to see you and say some things. I know you are tired and your world isn’t what you want.”
Granny moved her mouth. A low guttural sound came from somewhere deep inside her chest, growing louder. As if she were trying to speak.
I patted her hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk. You see I know just what you would say. All you have to do is listen.”
The sound stopped and her breath smoothed.
“You are right here in my head and heart. You will never leave me. I know you worry about me. You wanted me looked after. But you don’t have to worry. I’m okay. I’m better than okay. For the first time in my adult life, I am happy with who I am. And you don’t have to fret anymore. I know you don’t want to be here. I wish you would stay but that is purely selfish. You can leave if you have to. I will always have you right here with me. I love you so much and always will.”
Again the moan.
“And I know you have always loved me. Everything you did was for me.”
Her breath turned even. I stood there for a few minutes. Her face was smooth. There was a peace in the air. I kissed her and a tiny movement in her cheek came back to me. When I left, I stopped at the door and looked at her. I prayed that she would pass in complete peace. Then I left the room and met Jack. We left the hospital.
That night the pain pills given to Jack made him sick. He stayed up all night. At 5:45 in the morning, he fell asleep. I sat on the floor with my back next to the bed and slept. I dreamed I was at the hospital walking up to Granny’s room. My oldest daughter met me there and told me that Granny had left, that I had no reason to go inside. I woke up with a jump and the clock read 6:30 am. I had slept forty-five minutes. I got up to take my youngest daughter to school. When I returned an hour later, Jack met me at the door with the phone in his hand.
“You need to talk to your mother.”
As I took the receiver, I knew. I saw the dream fresh in my mind.
“Ann, your granny died this morning between 5:45 and 6:30 am.”
And you might think this is the end of the story. But it’s not. I cried and cried for two days before her funeral. My heart was broken. I wasn’t a bit brave. I wanted my granny. When I got home from the funeral, I went to lay down in my bedroom with the overhead light on. I was wide awake but knew I needed to sleep. I closed my eyes and opened them again.
Granny stood beside the bed looking at me. A thought went through my head that I was dreaming. That she wasn’t real. Then she bent over the bed and her head blocked out the overhead light. I gasped, and she disappeared. Granny was real. She had come to check on me before she moved on. I was her unfinished business. And that bit of magic has stayed with me for thirty-four years now. I know she is close by, keeping an eye out. She is aware I have published eight books. She shakes her head when I write some story based on her. But she is proud of me. I followed my dream, and that’s all she ever wanted for me. That I would chase my passion until it came true. Not one day goes by without me thinking about her. She was my granny, and I was her Annie.
Happy Halloween from Mountain Magic.
