BY DR. GLENN MOLLETTE
I was not quite 5 years old when I stood, looking up the steps to our upstairs, yelling, “Mommy hurry, Mamaw is dying.” My grandmother Ina Hinkle and aunt Maude Hinkle were in the room trying to comfort my Mamaw Mollette. Throughout the morning she had been sick. She had complained about pain, and Grandma Hinkle and Aunt Maude were constantly rubbing her arms trying to comfort her.
Life was different back in that day. My dad had driven our only car to West Virginia to work his shift in the coal mine. We didn’t have a hospital in our county and Doc Ford was the lone medical doctor. He routinely had 10 to 20 people waiting to see him.
We didn’t have a paramedic unit in Martin County. Our local funeral home would take people to the hospital in their hearse but rendered no medical care on the way. I got that ride twice: Once when I split my head open playing with a first cousin. The second time was after a bad car wreck while driving my first old Chevelle to high school.
We didn’t have a telephone at that time. We didn’t have a telephone until I was 9 years old and then it was an eight-family party line. Thus, there was no way my mother could call for help or drive to ask for help for my Mamaw.
She raced down the steps to my plea and the calls of Grandma Hinkle and Aunt Maude, who were now calling in unison with me to my mother, Eula, “Come, Eula, she is dying!”
We gathered around Mamaw’s bed and stood as she breathed her last few breaths and departed her body to be with Jesus. There wasn’t anything else we could do but cry as we held to her lifeless body.
The words of those saintly women standing in the room that day were, “She is now with the Lord.”
My sister Wanda recalls she was a junior in high school at that time. There were semester tests that particular day at school.
“Mamaw asked me not to go to school that day, saying, ‘Don’t go, I’m going to die today.’”
As many of us would probably reply, she said, “Mamaw, you aren’t going to die. You’re going to be fine.”
As we age, we know our bodies and we know when things have changed. Mamaw knew it was her last day.
When my dad came home from the coal mine, he went into Mamaw’s room, where her body lay, and bent over and hugged her. A little later, folks from the funeral home came for her body.
The funeral home brought her body back to our house, where her casket and flowers were placed in a bedroom just off our living room. Many family members and friends visited our house for the next couple of days.
Mamaw Mollette’s husband, my grandfather Lafe, whom I never met, died about a year or so before my dad and mom married. For the next 19 to 20 years, I don’t know the exact number, Mamaw Mollette lived with Mom and Dad and our family. She visited for weeks with her other sons, who lived in West Virginia, but spent most of her time with us.
I got less than five years with Mamaw, while my two sisters and two brothers spent many years with her.
We grew up in a small house with one bathroom. There were eight of us living in the house. We only had four small bedrooms and a hallway with a twin bed. We had guests all the time. Other family members were often visiting, and my mother worked nonstop to feed and take care of everybody. Looking back, I wonder how Mom and Dad could keep it all together. I was on the tail end of the family, so being worried about access to the bathroom and space wasn’t much of a concern at that stage.
My hat is off to my dad and mom for making a place for Mamaw all those years. They worked together.
Life was not always easy but it was all we knew and we did the best we could.
Mom and Dad stayed together for over 60 years. Both are now buried in the garden where they worked together most of their lives.
The point of all this is that families can make it if they will work hard, love each other and be very patient. Every family has ups and downs. No family is perfect. No one lives life without problems and troubles. Treating each other with love and respect and everyone working together are essentials for every family.
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a graduate of numerous schools, including Georgetown College, Southern and Lexington Seminaries in Kentucky. He is the author of 13 books, including “Uncommon Sense,” “Spiritual Chocolate” series, “Grandpa’s Store,” “Minister’s Guidebook Insights from a Fellow Minister.” His column is published weekly in over 600 publications in all 50 states. Listen every weekday at 8:56 a.m. on XM radio 131, visit him online at glennmollette.com. “Grandpa’s Store” is a fun and adventure-filled story from the perspective of a child and young teen in the late 50s and early 70s, an era of simpler American small-community life. Available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.