I can honestly say I am one of the luckiest people on this planet. I have a best friend who is also my grandma. Go on laugh it up, this guy just said his eighty year old grandma is his best friend. Before you laugh yourself silly let me tell you about one of the most amazing women you could ever meet.
My grandma has had let’s say a tumultuous life to say the least. She was one of seven kids born to a farming family just outside of Lumberton NC. They have very little growing up, they did have each other, love, and God.
Grandma married and had kids young. She started with my aunt Betty in 1958. The man she was married to was not a good person. He threatened, and tried to, kill my grandma more than once as well as all five of her kids. They even had to go into hiding to escape.
During her second marriage there was also times of discord. There was pain, there was sadness, and at one point there was even a gunshot wound. You read that right my grandma has been shot during a card game.
After all of this no one would blame anyone for being bitter, for hating the world. Grandma went the other way. She loves with her whole heart, she loves unconditionally, and she loves fully. She doesn’t have to agree with the way you live your life to love you. She understands that what you do isn’t who you are, she believes that everyone deserves to be loved.
I grew up living with grandma, or close to her. I was always in walking distance before I had a car and would see her multiple times a week after we had moved out of her house. No matter how bad I was, how aggravating, or even how mean I may have been she always loved me. Grandma taught me how to cook, sew, and crochet. She helped to raise me to be the man I am today, she helped to teach me the importance of kindness, caring, and Love.
It’s been a rough couple years for my grandma. She has lost three kids in the past two years, but she has never lost her faith. She has been in a dark place but she has had the light of God’s promises to keep her moving forward, and continuing to love us.
I struggle to be good enough, to be a person who I can be proud of, I struggle to be a person my grandma can be proud of. Even as I struggle she has never made me feel like I was less than.
I want to be remembered for the way I love all people, just the way Alice the Great has taught me to.
I love you.
bradglenn79 