Posted by Kara Norman on January 11, 2009 at 4:50pm
I was reading through my post in reply to Staci’s Wallace’s (Founder of Empowering Women's website) blog “Beyond the Vote” about what we are to do after Barack Obama's election to move into a place of action, and how I wrote about my Grandmother who was 83 and witnessed his election just two day prior, I am in tears. Just three days after Barack Obama was elected President, she was airlifted to a hospital in Atlanta and was placed on a ventilator after suffering not one but three brain aneurysms. My grandmother was my world. She taught me how to drive, she was there when I came on my period, she was my everything. I spent summers, and holidays with her so it was very difficult for me as I spent a week with her in the ICU watching her struggle to live and breath and then to watch her die, I am sad, in tears, grateful and just overwhelmed by this loss.My grandmother was a TRUE and ORIGINAL 'empowering woman'. She went to a historically black college (Clark Atlanta University) when few African Americans could even read and write let alone go to college. She told me months before she passed away that she had seen wonderful pioneers such as Mary McLeod Bethune and W.E.B. Dubois (was a professor at CAU at the time) walking around the her campus when she was a student. She graduated with a degree in education and taught elementary school for 37 years and even taught a second grade class of students during integration. Her marriage was very hard and my mom and aunts and uncles (6 children in all) say that he was a very difficult and unsupportive husband, but she still managed, to work, raise a family, be active in the church/community and make a way for her family. Despite all she dealt with in her life, she still managed to give back even in her later years. When I was in my early twenties, my grandmother helped teach a older woman in her church how to read, and she did this once a week over the phone. This woman was in her late sixties and had never learned to read, and my Grandma took it upon her self to teach her friend/church member something we take for granted in this day and age. They started with basic elementary school books and worked their way up to bible stories. What a precious gift she gave her friend.I struggle through my tears as it’s been a week or so since we buried her, but reading my post to Staci’s website, and actually going to visit my Grandmother on the day that we voted for Barack Obama (my last day to see her alive and functioning as normal), just sitting and talking with her about how she never thought she would see the day that an African American would be president and then to loose her so quickly, I am grateful. That my daughter’s who are 10 and 4 got to experience, love and be around their great grandmother is truly a blessing. They cried at her funeral because they would not see their precious “G.G” (Great Grandma) as they called her anymore. My Grandma Lucy was truly a woman of God, whenever I went to visit her throughout my whole life she always had a bible and devotional on her bed. You would think that after 80 years of life you wouldn’t need to study His word as much but she taught me that you always need God no matter how old you are. My Grandma was a strong, yet meek woman, always had a smile on her face and LOVED the Lord. She was active in her small country church in Georgia. In her dying days she could no longer smile, lift her arms or move her legs. So we, my mother and my aunt would read her, her favorite scriptures and sing her favorite hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus”. I could see only in her eyes that she heard every word and song that we sang.At her funeral her pastor said that she was truly a woman of God an empowering woman that inspired us all and he asked the audience who would take her place, who could she pass her baton to, who would fill her pew in the church. As I sat in the pews that I grew up in during my visits to my Grandma’s house, I realized that I would take her baton; it would be me that would carry on in her place. My dreams of inspiring girls and women are beyond what my Grandma could imagine in her time, she just wanted to teach young children. My dream is to empower and help girls/women to realize who they truly are and how special they are. I realize today, as I am sad by her loss, but encouraged by how much of an impact she had on me to make me be the woman that I am. To see how she raised my mom to be the beautiful and awesome woman that she is and how that trickles down through generations is truly amazing. So today I continue with my Grandma’s baton to lead the way to make a difference and influence generations to come. Nothing is impossible when it comes to our dreams and God!Picture: Four Generations: My Grandmother, Me, My Mother and My Youngest Daughter Kennedy in front of my Grandmother's Church August 2008:
Sorry gal for your grandma's loss,She is a true Hero,because she left a legacy with you and generations to come.Keep up the good work G.G started.so true will always need God no matter what age we are.Wonderful family...four generations....You are so blessed.
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