Remembering Granny

My maternal grandmother, Gladys Lowery Shows, passed away this past Sunday at the age of 93.  Her funeral is tomorrow in a rural Mississippi cemetery.  This is what I plan to share ...

We spend our lives searching for evidence of God. Surely unconditional love is proof here on earth. Granny felt that love for her family. Unconditional love does not mean unaccountable; she held me to a high standard because she believed in me – but I also knew no matter how far I fell, she would love me. Guaranteed.

Her love was obvious, evident in everything she did. The door to her home, like the door to her heart, was always open. I could not get out of my car before she was there at that door to greet me. She had been watching for me. Visits from family were like Christmas to a child for Granny. Remember the let-down you felt when Christmas was over? Granny felt that when the time came for me to leave. She was at that door again, lingering. How many times I wanted to turn around and drive back up that street and go inside her house and tell her, “I think I’ll stay one more day.” I never did. The world was waiting – work, and all the noisy distractions. Somehow everything seemed suspended when I crossed her threshold – life was slower at her house, spent mostly at the breakfast table, sharing.

I could go and on about her many characteristics I loved, especially her phenomenal cooking that flavors so many of my childhood memories, but I’ll share just two experiences. The first is when I was eight or nine and on crutches – which was my normal – and I managed to get locked inside the tiny pink tile bathroom on Lillian Highway. Granny was the only one home with me and she stood there in the hall by that pink flamingo picture and jiggled the door and stuck her face by the knob and coached me from having a full-blown panic attack. “If I have to break the window I will, Barry,” she said. And I knew she would, and that calmed me. Somehow she managed to jiggle that lock open from the outside.

The second experience was after my Papa’s funeral here in Bryant Cemetery. We went back to Aunt Imogene’s to eat and there was a huge crowd and it was the typical paper-plate-on-your-knees buffet with folks sitting all over the house and yard. I managed to spill my iced tea but before I could get out of the chair Granny was on her hands and knees cleaning it up. She was the new widow – the one I should have been waiting on. Anyone who knew Granny knew she had a servant’s heart. Her eye was always on the sparrows of her family.

And that is evidence of God’s Unconditional Love, all the evidence I need. Thank you Granny, for being His faithful servant messenger in my life. You’re the best.