Personal Narrative: My Grandma Could Talk For Years

My grandma was a mother of three. She had my Aunt heather, Aunt Angie, and my mother. She raised my mother and Heather while going to college, which is a fight on its own, but to make it more difficult, she had hodgkins and had spent over an entire year fighting it in Iowa’s childrens hospital and held victory her senior year.. The chances of surviving hodgkins in the 60’s was around 75% and wasn’t the end for my Grandma, she lived to fight another day. Moving on in her life,She spent most of her time studying, she graduated high school on the top of her class, then going to college of hamilton for business. During that time, she had my mom and my Aunt Heather on the way.

My grandma Linda was her only daughter. I spent weeks at Ma’s house in Holstein, Iowa. Christmas for the Grell’s was always hosted at Ma’s house. When I was young she would take me swimming at the communities pool, and ice cream afterwards. Ma’ was an expert cook, her favorite summer dish was fried chicken. She was nearly famous for that fried chicken. In September of 2012 Doctors discovered a tumor in Ma’s liver. Ma’s children paid for an assisted living home in Sioux City, Iowa. She pasted away March 21, 2013. Leading up to March the relationship between my mother and her parents decrepitated. My grandparents refused to come to my high school graduation.

When I was younger, I grew up with four grandparents who I could spend time with. As I started to grow older, my grandparents started to deteriorate. My grandmother developed Alzheimer’s, and more specifically dementia. I remember one day at my beach house when I was talking to her, she asked me who I was because she couldn’t remember. She didn’t remember her own grandson. She started to lose all her memory and she had difficulty hearing and speaking. It got to a point where there was no way of communicating with her, and we wondered if she even knew who her own family was. She went through this deterioration for upwards of 5 years, and I it got to a point where I forgot what she was like before she developed the mental disease. I would watch

A few months into the school year I got some news from my parents that referred to my grandmother. She had an accident in her home that put her in critical condition. At this point my father rose to the occasion and began to watch after my grandmother, his mom. Taking care of my grandmother was not an easy task. She was constantly being moved in-between nursing homes and hospitals. She continuously had unstable vitamin levels and her body and was just in very poor physical condition. My father held on though, he was always by her side making sure she was okay. While my grandmother won’t ever fully recover, she is doing much better. It’s because of my father that she’s still alive today. I lost more of my innocence through all this but at the same time I learned that when things get bad, family takes care of one

My grandma had survived a hard life, and yet managed to raise four responsible, well-educated, and successful children. All this she did while working as a respected psychiatric nurse and a state mental health board member. Although she had had and was still overcoming trials in life, I always knew she would be there and cared about me and my life. As my brother and I grew older and were unable to visit my grandparents as often as we

My Great Grandma was my best friend, I’m not sure how else to describe our relationship. She was someone I looked up to and hoped to be like when I grew up. She taught me a lot about life and how crazy it can be. Whenever I have tough days I replay her encouraging words in my head. Towards the end of February of 2013, my family received a call from my Great Grandpa to inform us that my Great Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We found this out only a few weeks before we were supposed to head down to Arizona to visit them for spring break. Our family didn’t know how severe it was going down there, we came to find out she was genuinely unhealthy. She didn’t want to leave her room, she didn’t want to complete simple tasks, she would tell

Back in the days, my wonderful Grandmother died in 1980 and left a few things around. My Mother went to her house to find out what she left in her house. I wasn’t born then but my mom told me what happened we really miss our grandmother and how she made us laugh and cry at some times. When my grandmother was alive she used to tell us how slavery was back in the days. We used to actually cry when she told us that we couldn’t believe how they use to get treated back in the days .My grandmother was a helping kind lady that helped us when she could that was the only person that looked out for us. She was the best in the world I know everybody else in the world wish they still have they grandmother. Whenever we didn’t have anything to eat my grandmother would make us something

That’s a huge reason why I have nothing to do with my grandma, because of the way that she treated my mom all those years throughout her childhood. My mom had to learn to grow up real quick and take over as head of the household and care for her 5 other brothers. So as soon as mom turned 18, she moved in with her grandma and took her brothers with her. Now under her grandmas roof lived 8 people total in a small 3 bedroom house. Mom worked hard throughout high school and ended up graduating early so that she could hurry and get into the workforce. She wanted to help her grandma out and bring more income in for her family.

She told me all the struggles she had to overcome so we all could have a better life. My grandmother was a wise and strong woman. She raised thirteen children of her own and some of her grandchildren. I loved to see me granny smile and hate for something to be wrong. On September 18, 2017 was her last day alive and it seem to be the worst day of my life? I cried and cried, but I had to pull myself together. I had to be a man because one day ever one has to go, and if it’s your time it’s just your time. God has a reason for ever thing he do and haven just got an awesome angel. A couple days after she died I was stuck in a slump. All I could do was get high to ease the pain. At time I was just a lost soul and had a thought I had to do something better with my life that’s what granny would have wanted. I was chilling at the house and I had to decide to go apply for some jobs. So the next day a phone call woke me out of my sleep and it was Job Corp and that’s when I made it up in my mind that I need to come here to brighter my future. So God truly workers in mystery ways but they are blessing. My granny is my motivation while I’m here at job corp. She would want me to get

Those two years came and went until one day dad received a phone call from grandma, she needed us. Uncle Tim and she had an argument about his wife and her children, they were living with her until they had their new house built and something blew up. Without a second glance my uncle and his family packed up everything and left. Grandma did not make her own food, she did not shop for her own groceries, she was purely dependent on her son, and she never had any reason not to be, because he was always there for her. Grandma was alone for the first time in a long long time. All it took was for a phone call from grandma to have dad running over there, leading to the realization that dad did not talk to grandma for two years not by his choice but because grandma had not reached out to him

At a young age, my Grandma had the poorest living conditions. Brought here from Okinawa, Japan, she lived in very poor housing with poor schools. She could not attend school until the age of 7 because she was not able to speak English very fluently. She moved out as soon as she could because she was abused by her father. She quickly married and had 4 kids. Upon disclosure that her husband was abusive to her children, she left him fueled with memories of her childhood. She then was a single mother with 4 kids. My Grandma then had to learn what it took to be grown up.

Once I arrived at my grandmother’s house, my grandmother was so clam. She had raised him as a child. Her nephew Bill was gone and never coming back and she just sat in the living room and singed along to gospel songs. My mom and aunt walked in shortly after us, their faces were filled with dried tears and all they could do was gaze as they sat down in the living room with us. We all sat in silence for about a minute or so until my grandmother said “It’s ok, he is in a better place now.” We slowly began to open up and share things we enjoyed about Bill. Bill would always get the party started. He had as much rhythm as a dancing monkey but he would dance all night long. He acted as if he were a teenage sometimes. He loved to joke. Bill also could not make kool-aid right to save his life. His kool-aid would be so sweet you could feel the leftover sticky sugar on your top lip as the juice dried. At that moment we knew

As a child there weren’t too many of us. Just me, and my cousin Shay we were close enough in age that we enjoyed the same things. We played several games together. Hide and Seek was our favorite game to play. Everybody played Hide and Seek even the older kids in our family played with us. We would all gather at “Grandma’s House” and we played Hide and Seek in the basement. It was so fun we really enjoyed ourselves while playing. Playing Hide and Seek was the main thing we looked forward to when going over “Grandma’s House”. Another game we played was “Outburst”, the whole family would get on even teams and we would play the game in the living room. It was fun and also very funny hearing everybody’s outbursts of the answers sometimes they were very far off. We would just yell out answers and at the end of 1 minute we would see how many we got

I will tell you a tale of a woman of great success. This is a woman that has inspired me to be something great one day and to never give up trying. Though she may be growing into her elderly years she has lived a very challenging, joyful, loving and successful life. She is a woman of great faith and character, she is my grandmother.

During those last five years, my grandmother had little help with grandpa’s care. All of their nine children were adults and living on their own all across the country. My grandmother was his total care giver. The duties she performed was his bathing and clothing, feeding, shaving, assisting him with using the bathroom, and carrying him from wheelchair to bed or reclining chair in the living room.