In memory of...
Margaret Lillian Weeks
Born: February 5, 1905
Passed: December 25, 1994

This Christmas will mark ten years since I lost my great grandmother and one of the most wonderful people to ever grace us with her presence. Ten years and I still can't think about her without crying. I don't go a single day without thinking about her and missing her. We lost her on Christmas day and in a way it was the best present anyone could have possibly given her. She'd been in a nursing home or hospital continuously for over two years when she passed away. She was miserable, in pain, and wasting away. My grandfather on my mother's side of the family had Alzheimer's and died in a nursing home several years before. I'd thought that was hard but at least he hadn't known where he was, grandma knew and hated it until the very end. She wouldn't eat and kept being hospitalized and put on IV's. She'd broken her hips and legs several times because she was so frail. None of us could bear to see her like that. I hated seeing her but felt guilty for not visiting too. She was such a strong woman all her life it was hard to keep in mind the woman in the nursing home was the same one who used to love to fish, play bingo, travel and survived so many surgeries and made it look so easy. They'd given her only months to live in 1972 when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Not only did she survive that round of breast cancer but a second one years later as well as several others. She had a urostomy in the late 80's, cataracts removed from both eyes and countless other surgeries. The doctors always told us "She's not young anymore, this is dangerous." and each time she laughed and proved to them she wasn't as old as they thought she was. I always loved the nurses reactions when she'd go to the hospital and they would ask her to take her teeth out. She'd stare at them indignantly and inform them her teeth were all hers and she couldn't take them out. She had all her own teeth right up to a car accident two years before she passed away that knocked a couple out. My grandmother was an outstanding woman who taught our family what the meaning of family was. No matter what, your family is always your family and even though at times you may not like them much they're supposed to be there for you and you're supposed to be there for them. I think she'd be ashamed of the way we've all behaved since she passed on. If she were still alive she'd have given us all a good old fashioned tail chewing by now.

She raised my dad and his sister from the day dad was born. Which is part of why I called her grandma and not great grandma, she was Mom to my dad. He'd been born prematurely and sick and the doctors told her he'd never make it. His mom had walked out of the hospital leaving him to die but grandma literally took him out of the hospital and took him home. She raised him and his sister as her own kids even though her own were grown and gone. She supported them through all their lives and all they did. As far as she was concerned her "kids" could do no wrong, she'd always support them. She helped them buy houses, start businesses, whatever they needed or wanted to do. She was a wonderful mom to them and later to me. She was the strength that kept our family together. It wasn't an easy job at times but she always managed.

My fondest memories...

Grandma loved to fish, even though I wasn't a big fisher I loved to go with her. I remember her trying to pull in a big one at the old marina with her cane pole. She almost had it too, then the fish pulled her pole apart and left with the top section. LOL Grandma wasn't one to swim but she ran out in the water as fast as she could chasing that pole. She came back wet to the waist in those old polyester stretch pants and cussing like a drunk sailor cause she hadn't been able to catch it.

I remember another time we were out fishing on a river bank. She hadn't had much luck but that didn't discourage her. She was more concerned about me because I loved to get in the water and she'd seen a water moccasin swimming around. Being a kid, I was about 5 at the time I think, I didn't care. All that changed when grandma got a bite and went to reel her catch in and found out it was the water moccasin!! I will never forget seeing that snake on her line and her trying desperately to get rid of it before it got up the bank. I spent the rest of that day in the camper looking paranoid at anything that moved. To this day all it takes is one spotting of a snake in the water to send me home straight away.

I was about 6 I think when I caught my first "big" fish. It was nearly as long as I was tall and it took more than a little help from grandma to reel it in and get it up on the bank. She was so excited you'd have thought I'd just reeled in the Loch Ness monster or something. There was a kids fishing contest going on at a local store and somewhere in all grandma's stuff is the picture they took of her and I holding the fish. She was so upset when I didn't win. LOL She claimed the kid that won had help from his father. LOL Like she hadn't helped me? She still used to rant about it when she got to talking about the past.

Then there was the summer she "kidnapped" me. LOL My dad was an over the road trucker and my mom had went with him to help out about halfway through my kindergarten year so I'd went to live with grandma full time for a while. I spent the rest of that year and first grade living with her. If you'd asked her about it though she'd have told you she raised me and in her will actually left custody of me to my parents. LOL Each year the amount of years she raised me went up. When I was a kid it was the first five years of my life, she'd raised me alone, when I was older it was the first twelve. LOL I was actually about a year and a half. The summer after first grade we took off in her camper to visit her family down south. What I didn't know what she hadn't told my parents this. LOL They'd planned on taking me on the road with them over the summer but came home to find out I was gone already and "somewhere" in the south was all my aunt could tell them. LOL We went to Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, and everywhere in between. It was a wonderful trip that I'm thankful I got to make. I met a lot of my relatives I wouldn't have gotten to meet otherwise. I spent a lot of that summer in the south and it brought me to understand that side of my family so much more. Everyone talks about life in the south being different and I knew my grandmother had grown up there but didn't understand. Spending that summer hopping around the south with her made me see what she'd been talking about. I got in touch with that side of my heritage. I got a peek into the past as well. I grew up in a world of cable TV, phones, remote control TV's, stereo's, all the comforts of life. On our trip we went to visit Marshall's (my grandmother's "husband") sister. I think she was the only family he had in the states. She lived way up on the side of a mountain in West Virginia, and I mean way up. It was beautiful up there, even in the middle of summer it was cold!! Days were cool but the nights were cold!! She had an outhouse, no indoor plumbing, no TV, let alone cable, one radio in the house that received one station, sometimes. Her phone was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Her house was old, very old, not run down type old but just like stepping back into the past. I don't think I ever thanked her properly for the things I learned that summer. I don't think I truly understood until I was much older.

I look back now and wish I'd say so many things to her. She such a wonderful person and always knew so much, I hope she knew how much she effected my life.

Thank you grandma. I miss you, I'll always miss you.