The Family Connection

When I was ten years old my grandmother died. She was my favorite grandmother (I had three of them) because she had lived with our family for a while when I was younger. Nobody ever talked about it, but she lived with our family so that my Father could claim her as a dependent in order to give her medical coverage to treat her breast cancer. All I was told was that she needed an operation and we would visit her in the lobby of Walter Reed Hospital.

They told us that she had died of pneumonia that last week of October. My father was her only child and she was unmarried at the time. Her sister had died before her - also from breast cancer. So my parents left the three of us kids with a competent babysitter and headed to Tennessee to take care of her affairs.

They came back driving her car and pulling a u-haul trailer full of treasures. The car in itself was a treasure. It was a beautiful convertible, I think it was a Wildcat, with a push-button dash. The trailer contained everything: furniture, a color TV, soapstone carvings, rhinestone cigarette holders and a five-speed bike with a banana seat, and many other things. Being the only granddaughter, I was the recipient of many of those wonderful things. She had a beautiful canopy bed with a satin bedspread. She had all kinds of fancy clothes, many of them from the orient, and since she was a small person, my mother could not wear any of them. She had a variety of jewelry, from costume to pearls and diamonds. There were silver tea sets and fine china, oriental chests and curio cabinets, a large color TV and a small portable four inch one.

When I missed my grandmother, I would lay in bed at night and talk to her in heaven from her canopy bed. I would wear her beautiful shoes and gloves that went up to the elbow and jewelry that my mom had passed on to me. And, I would ride that five speed bike as fast as I could. Even though I missed her a lot, the things that I inherited reminded me of her often.

It turns out I inherited more that some fancy stuff. I inherited her genes and that's where this cancer story begins.