Margaret Elizabeth Elliotte Whisnant July 17, 1912

Originally posted July 17, 2012

Today would be my maternal grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth Elliotte Whisnant's 100th birthday.
She died almost exactly 10 years ago in June, right before her 90th birthday.  Only 2 of my children ever saw her on this earth and I have many many fond and wonderful memories of my time with her for over 30 years.  One of the reasons I am thankful for salvation is because I know I will see her again and know her in heaven.  I also know that she is there oohing and awing over my 2 little baby boys and know she is enjoying them so much.  She liked babies, maybe that's why I feel such a kinship to her as I love babies too. 

She didn't have any easy life (do any of us really?) but she kept her spirit and grace, and laughter with her.  I have so many memories they jumble up inside me and threaten to come out in a big gush, all tangled together only making sense to me and I have to sit quietly and sort them out, like untangling a ball of yarn so that I can put it on paper and make them neat enough to share with anyone else.
Today I thought of my Maw-Maw a completely different way, a way I never knew her.  She was born just 3 months after the Titanic went down, 3 and a half years after her husband, my Paw-Paw was born, whom she did not know then, and just a few years before World War I, The Great War.  The last and 6th child of my great-grandparents, she and her nephew, James Ridenhour both nursed at the same breast.  My great-grandmother, Emma Lee Hartman Elliotte and her daughter, Rosa Ridenhour having had babies 9 months apart and Grandmother Elliotte nursed both her daughter and grandson. 

I have all the memories, tangled ones at that, but recent events in which she was not here, not here for me to tell her or lay my head on her lap and cry them out, like I would have done before.  Did she not feel the same way in February 1943 as I did in 2008 when she rode home silently from the hospital with her dead infant daughter, Brenda Elizabeth in the back seat in a box?  I heard many times about the hardships of it and the pain of bringing home the baby to bury and the memories of the hospital so raw still that she said she never never wanted to go back there.  I listened in wonderment as a small child but didn't understand because modern technology today and when I was little, even, would have saved my aunt.  But I did understand on a beautiful fall day, October 10, 2008, when my husband and I drove home from a hospital with our infant son in the back seat of our car, bringing him home to bury.  A hospital which I had never been to before and haven't since and know I would have a panic attack if I had to go back there.  Knowing now, that modern technology is not always an answer, knowing that no technology now or ever would have saved our son for us on this earth.  Did my Maw Maw not go home to her almost 3 year daughter and older children?  Did I not return home to my just turned 2 year old son and my older children?  The comparison to feel another's pain brings me to my knees.

She later birthed another namesake, my mother, Margaret just as I birthed another child as well, one I named for her family, the Ellis Family.  Another daughter of mine's name is Elizabeth which is the name my Maw-Maw went by her whole life.  And life continues on and only God knows what He has in store for these children He blesses us with. 

Not knowing my great-grandmother myself but hearing many stories about her and visiting her home as a young girl (it is no longer there but I remember going inside and walking around and can still see it in my head today), I wonder at her acceptance and love of my grandmother, her sixth child, her fifth girl.  (In today's culture she might have never have been born.) I'm sure they would have loved her graciously and she was spoiled by these older sisters and big brother.  And here I am with my 3rd daughter born and as the youngest, she is adored and spoiled equally by her older brothers and sisters.  And I know my great-grandmother's love for this child of hers, as I can understand the same love with our new baby.  Boy or girl, no matter.  Love is unconditional and multiplies exponentially.

I have so many fond memories and a few unpleasant ones but I knew my Maw-Maw long enough to know her through mostly the good times and the happy times.  She taught me how to use a chamber pot (even though she had an indoor bathroom), I guess habits she learned as a young child never left her.  She cooked whatever I wanted for breakfast, let me sleep as late as I wanted, washed and ironed my clothes, cooked meals for me, even if she and I were the only ones around, and kept my 3 year-old hand print above her bed and my picture beside it, always.  Today I have the hand print returned to me and I treasure it because she did.

I  was the one who got her to quit smoking cigarettes.  She would pretend to get mad when I threw them in a trashcan but then she would laugh, and finally she did quit.  I remember riding in the car with her, swinging on the swing together, and she rocked me always in her rocking chair.  Most of my children have been rocked in that same rocking chair and it sits in my bedroom today between my bed and the crib.  Maw-Maw spoiled me so much she even dressed me!  When I was 16 she said she wanted to give me something, something of hers that she had and she wrote it down on a piece of paper and signed it (I still have it today).  She offered me her vanity dresser with a small stool that didn't match it.  It is veneer and peeling today and needs some work and is not valuable, but it's so sentimental to me and both have a special place in my home.  I spent a lot of time sitting on that stool and at that dresser.  I tried on all her shoes and I still remember the smells of her creams and powder, and her make-up that she would wear when we "went to town".

Years after she died, when the house, where the sun sets streaming through the kitchen windows, was sold, the porch furniture was being offered with the house, unless I wanted it.  I had sat in those metal chairs most of my life, the rocking glider she and I sat in together for hours.  So, today they are with me and they will be finished and painted again.  I have a gold locket, shaped like a heart that is worn as a bracelet, in fact it leaves tight marks on my wrist, that she gave me.  It was given to her in 1928 when she was 16 but by whom I'll never know; she never told me.  She was married by the age of 17, March 30, 1930 to my Paw-Paw and they were married for 67 and 1/2 years.  I never knew the story of the bracelet and no one else seems to know either.  Perhaps I will never know but I wear it today and more often the older I become.

I remember Christmas presents at their house and my 3rd birthday party was there too with all my cousins.  I remember that party, especially the balloons.  I grew up in the house, it was a part of my soul and spirit.  I didn't want to go there after my grandparents were gone, that was too hard, the house was too silent.  The radio was off.  Lil' Abner was not playing in the background.  But there were things for me to look at.  Did I want this or that?  No, I shook my head.  I had a few things she had given me but other than that, I took very little.  I had exactly what I wanted, which was what I needed, my memories and the things she pressed into my hands over the years, both tangible and unseen.
She bore my mother at the age of 33, her fifth and last child and when she died I was only two years shy of that age and still needed and wanted her very badly.  I know that their marriage was not peaceful, I know there were lots of difficulties, life was hard and not easy but all of us face our trials and our crosses and it's how we face them that's important.  There is always "stuff" we have to work around and sin is every rampant and can get out of control.  This is a fact of life for each of us.  But, I mostly only remember the good, the lovely, the laughter, the joy, the singing, the time spent, the investment made in my life and I know that we all have this opportunity in the life of a child, some child, somewhere.  May we not squander it and may we be wise enough that when we know this is our mission that we embrace it with all the grace, love, and joy we can, just as it was done for me for many years, years ago.  I am a better person because of it.  I would not be the same without it.