Doris Lane

Yesterday I, along with about 45 other immediate family members, buried my grandmother. She was my dad's mom and she passed away early Thursday morning at the age of 91 years old after battling several different types of cancers and illnesses for over 15 years.

My grandmother lived in Weakley County Tennessee the majority of her life, where she raised 7 children and was the wife of a dairy farmer. After my grandfather passed away (whom I never had the privilege to meet) she moved back to the sleepy little town of Dresden, TN where she started her 47 year career at the Weakley County Courthouse serving as the deputy clerk and secretary/administrative assistant until she retired at the age of 83.

My grandmother's name was Doris Nan  Davis Nanney and she lived on Doris Lane for the remaining 42 years of her life.

Most of you may already know this but my Dad was the middle child of 7 children (as I mentioned above) and grew up milking cows until he went to college (where he describes himself as a C+ business student) and then appropriately made the decision to join the Navy and fly airplanes and in turn, the Navy paid my dad's way through medical school. Before my Dad decided to go to medical school, he wanted to be a child psychologist (hence where my overly analytical nature comes from). All of this is to explain how we ended up in Meridian, MS and the rest of our very large immediate family all in Tennessee (mostly Memphis and the Dresden area). Meridian has a naval air station and so during my dad's active duty days, we ended up in Meridian for him to serve some time at the navy base and ended up staying there when he got out of the navy.

All of this is really to tell you that we lived about 6-7 hours away from my grandmother growing up. Which as a child, felt more like 24 hours.

We didn't get to see her much because my mother was raising 4 children (7 and under) and my dad worked all the time.

We made the annual trek to Dresden at least once a year for Thanksgiving and every so often, we would go up and visit during the Summer.

My grandmother, whom I call "Grandmama Nanney" was a tall woman. She was tall and thin and dressed like a working woman in suits and skirts. Which was vastly different from my other grandmother (my mom's mom) who always dressed in wind-suits and warm-up outfits.

The things I remember most about my very limited time with my grandmother are these...

She never complained. I never once heard her mention a word that could have been perceived as negative. And if anyone EVER had a reason to complain about life's difficulties, it would have been her. Her husband died and left her with 7 children to finish raising when she was 49 years old, she started experiencing different aliments, one of which was breast cancer which she miraculously fought and won...and she buried her eldest daughter in 1993 (I was 11) from Melanoma. Money was always an issue and yet she never complained. She never asked for more.

During our visits, I would relish the times I spent with her in the early mornings because she and I shared a common trait of being early risers. She would be busy baking her ever famous apple pies from scratch in the kitchen with coffee brewing while I would sit at the kitchen table watching the sunrise in the distance from the window over the farmland. The first thing she would always say to me when I walked into the kitchen would be, "Good morning, my child! Look what a beautiful day the Lord made for us."

My grandmama wasn't a messy or dramatic woman. She wasn't into gossip and she never needed to know what was going on in her little town although I'm sure, from working at the court house, she knew absolutely everything that went on in that sleepy little village.

My grandmother only spoke words of praise and positivity.

She held her head high with dignity and grace until her last breath.

It was only in the last year that I knew my grandmother was truly getting sicker because when I saw her last Thanksgiving and asked her how she was doing, she replied, "I'm not feeling too well these days." And that was the FIRST time, during her decade long battle with leukemia, that I ever heard her express distress.

My grandmother lost most of her vision years ago from macular degeneration and she's weighed about 80 pounds for the last year on her 6 foot tall frame. She had hearing difficulties and her systems have been failing her for awhile. But you would have never known any of that from talking to her.

I got to talk to my grandmother for the last time last Saturday after I finished working a long shift at St. Dominics. She told me she had seen better days but that she was hanging in there and was happy to be seeing my dad, mom, sister, and nephew as they were visiting her. She asked me how my day was at work and we talked about how much she loved her physical therapist because he made her laugh.

The last thing my grandmother told me was that she loved me and that she was proud of me.

Which is exactly the way she's ended every conversation I've ever had with her.

I'm not an overly emotional person. I don't cry a lot. And I hate crying in public. But I think I might have shed more tears yesterday than most of the people that attended that funeral. Because although I am so happy and relieved that my grandmother passed over to her forever home in peace and is no longer suffering, the permanence of death and it's powerful sting are still so incredibly painful.

My grandmother taught me how to handle life and disappointing situations without ever saying a word to me about them--she taught me about unconditional love, support, loving-kindness, generosity, how to live with grace and how to be strong in the face of adversity through the way that she lived her life. The only expectation I knew my grandmother had of me was to work hard and enjoy God's blessings. Because she wanted me, and the rest of us, to be happy and to know peace.

The legacy my grandmother left us with inspires me to be the best possible version of myself while here on earth. Her life and death--and their meaning and significance leave me with a torch to pass on to future generations. It's a torch of hope and encouragement and love --knowing that if we truly have the support from our families and friends, that anything is possible. We truly can do anything we want--we can make all our dreams come true. Because sometimes, we need others to believe in us until we learn to believe in ourselves.

And although my grandmother and I never did any yoga together, she is truly the embodiment of what doing yoga off your mat looks like.

May I live my life in a way that will continue to make my grandmother proud of me.

May we all live our lives in a way that will make others proud of us---but most of all, that will make us proud of ourselves.

Happy Sunday.