Memories of a Magnificent Woman

Have you ever felt a void so deep in your life that you dreamed, daydreamed and longed to have a person back in your life? I don't know if it is because of the birth of Isabella (Helen Isabella)or what but a lot of my thoughts of late have been about my late grandmother, Helen Rea.

When my mom and dad built the home where I grew up and the one they are still in today, my dad built my maternal grandmother a house next to them, with enough room between for some privacy and a big vegetable garden. So I lived a hop, skip and a jump away from my "MawMaw". She was an elderly lady my entire life (my mom was 38 when she had me). She had raised 8 children and buried one at 11 months old and was also raising her brother, Vernon who had Down's Syndrome.

Mawmaw was an incredibly wise woman. She could remember everything and I would sit, enthralled in her stories of long ago, during the days of wagons and one room schoolhouses. She had many brothers and sisters so there was never a dull moment in her life. Mawmaw walked on one crutch the entire time I knew her. She would use that crutch to whop us when we did something or said something bad. She made these incredibly good tea cakes that weren't too sweet but had this taste that only a grandmother could bake.

She loved to cook and loved her family. Some of my favorite times were of us baking cookies and making those real maple popcorn balls. Everyone in the neighborhood would come to her house on Halloween night to get one and they left a taste in your mouth that would make you want to slap your mama! Oh, sometimes I would get irritated at her. Sometimes she would lecture me or tell on me for something. I remember one time, I said a curse word in front of her ("damn") and she told my parents. I had to rake her leaves for a week for that. Then there was another time that I did something wrong and I had to help clean out her septic tank- you guessed it, in there, deep with a shovel, shoveling out poop! Ugh!!! After that, I was pretty much an angel around her...

She was born in 1902 and when I was a teenager, she started burning her food and she was put in a nursing home down the road. I made sure to go and visit frequently and she loved having visitors. Her mind never went though and she was tough as an ox. Sometimes she would get so ill that they would call in the family on numerous occasions saying "the end is very near" and she'd bounce back and make fools out of all of us! She was sharp as a tack until the day she died. I remember that day like it was yesterday. My mom and I had been up with her, and it truly was her last days- or was it- she'd fooled us so many times before. I had been an EMT for a couple of years and decided to care for her needs (changing,suctioning, etc) because the nurses weren't doing as well as we wanted.

My mom and I were exhausted from staying there days on end, not wanting to leave her- but we really needed to go home and take a shower. So we did. We got the phone call a little while later, she had gone on to her "Glory Land." We were not with her. Mom and I both felt so guilty for a long while after that but we know she forgave us.

I know that MawMaw was one of the strongest, most loved and respected women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I was just lucky that I got to be her granddaughter. Mawmaw, I love you and miss you terribly. I know you are my guardian angel and sit on my shoulder so you can watch over me. I'll see you on the other side...

In loving memory of a beloved mother, sister, wife, and grandmother -Helen Gould McCutcheon Rea...Oct 5, 1902 - April 3, 1993