Ready to Travel...

John is in the UK on business and I am sitting here with great anticipation of my upcoming trip to Los Angeles. I will be there a whopping 10 days. Linda (my best friend) will be coming in on Wednesday and then on Thursday morning (July 8th) we will both fly to LA. She will be there for 4 days and we will do the touristy thing...movie stars homes, Jay Leno, and look for movie stars. Then we will see Jenny and Dave's play and she will fly home on Sunday. Then I will have the rest of the time to spend with the kids.

We will have lunch at the Ivy and dinner at Mr. Chow's. I can't wait..

Screwed up post....

This next post got all screwed up and I have no idea how. Somehow, it got published to the wrong Blog....I think it was in the beginning when I was trying to start the blog, I screwed up somehow and made another Blog and it seems to be named with just a dot....like the title is .

I am so stupid...so, when I realized that this one didn't post to the right place, I tried to copy and paste it....it turned out sooooo light it is hard to read....go to the bottom of the next post titled MY MOTHER...NANNY, and click where it says COMMENTS (0) and it will take you to the other blog and you can read it much better.... your comments will go to the other blog...but it is easy to read at least and you can leave a comment there.

This one is just soooo light....Thanks for reading....

My Mother...Nanny

She was truly loved. When she died in February 1985 she had 13 grandchildren. She died in a nursing home owned by my neice and her grandchild and her husband. We were lucky in that regard because she didn't have to pay anything and everyone knew she was the grandmother of the owner. It was a sweet setup...but it was still a nursing home. She never wanted to go to a nursing home and she only went when she knew it was the best thing for her to do. Her mind was sharp as a tack right up to the very end. It was her body that gave out on her. To this day we aren't certain exactly what killed her.

It all began in April 1979. She came to stay with me while we waited for Jeff to be born. While she was there she showed me a lump in her breast. It was more on one of her ribs, but it was still a lump. She said she had been to the doctor a few weeks before and didn't mention it to him. She said if it was anything important, she thought he would have found it. I am sure the reason for that was FEAR. I told her I wanted her to go back to the doctor specifically to find out what that was when she got home. She said she wanted to go to a family reunion in July first. After that, she said she would go to the doctor.

She went to that family reunion and she ran into an old friend of hers. Someone she hadn't seen in over 50 years. He was a man who lived in their neighborhood way back when she was a young girl living with her parents. He was a little older than her and his wife had recently died and he had 2 little girls. He wanted to court mama, but her parents told him she was too young. She had forgotten about him til she ran into him all those years later at the reunion. They began a love affair. She was 72 and I don't know how old he was. He had remarried years before and his 2nd wife had died. Mama was in love again!! Daddy had been dead 11 years. His name was Leon. He lived in Alabama (where we were originally from) and mama lived in South Carolina, but he would come see her and he even gave her a ring. She was very happy.

Then she finally went to the doctor to find out about this mysterious lump. He said he couldn't be sure unless he biopsied. It was August 2, 1979 when she had the biopsy. I sat by the phone waiting for news. It was breast cancer and they did a radical mastectomy that day.

When she came home from the hospital we all took turns staying with her for weeks so she wouldn't have to be alone. It was me, my sister in law, Jan, Mlou and Bonnie who would take turns staying with her one week at the time. She was starting to recover...the doctor said her lymph nodes were clear, but he wanted her to have radiation anyway because the lump was actually growing on one of her ribs. She went through the radiation and then she started going downhill again. She seemed to get worse and worse. She couldn't breath and would cough all the time. She was weak and it became apparent that she could not live alone anymore.

I was the youngest daughter and I wanted her to come live with me. By this time Jeff was about 18 months old. We set her up with a hospital bed in our 3rd bedroom and things were going along pretty smoothly for a while. She had a really hard time walking. She never went downstairs unless John was home to carry her down. It was hard taking care of her sometimes and heartbreaking because she would get so sick sometimes. She needed oxygen 100% of the time. Jeff loved mama and she loved him so much. She read to him and he would lay beside her in the bed and tell him stories. I hope he remembers how much she loved him.

I loved my mama more than life itself. But when I became pregnant with Jenny, Jeff was 2 and a half and I had my hands full. It was so difficult changing her bed and taking all her meals to the bed and being up with her all night many nights because she would be so sick. Getting her to the doctor was a real challenge too. Mama felt so badly about me having to do everything for her. I know she hated it. John was in the Navy and he was gone part of the time too. I was overwhelmed to a large degree. This is when I kept the diary and wrote in it every single day pouring out my feelings in that book. It helped me so much, especially years later when I would feel so badly about mama being in the nursing home. She had to go there, I couldn't take care of her anymore, especially after my baby came.

One day, I was trying to help mama to the bathroom and she fell. There she was on the floor and I could not begin to pick her up. She couldn't get up. I went to a neighbor's house and asked the man to please help me get mama to my car. He back hurt and we just didn't know how badly hurt she was. We went directly to the emergency room. He doctor came there and they did xrays, etc. Turns out she was ok but the doctor told me that I could not take care of her anymore. In 2 months I would have a newborn and a 3 year old. He said he was going to put mama in the hospital for a week and during that time, I needed to have a plan for her.

Her granddaughter with the nursing home had already told mama she could come live at the nursing home but we were trying to avoid that. It was time for her to go there. But I didn't want her to leave before my baby was born. I wanted her to be there, I wanted her to hold my baby and to know my baby. Mama came home from the hospital and we had a plan. Jeff was so happy to see mama when she came home from the hospital. He said to her "you ar a sight for sore eyes"...we thought that was so cute.

So, my sister, Bonnie came to stay with us until the baby was born and then she would go with mama on the plane to Alabama where mama would then live in the nursing home. She stayed until Jenny was one month old. Thankfully, I have photos of her holding Jenny and we definitely created memories during that month after Jenny was born. It was in June 1982 that mama went to the nursing home. She lived another 2 and a half years at the nursing home. My neice would go see her daily. She had 2 daughters (mama's great grandaughters) and they loved mama too. I would go see her every 3 months. I did this and would take the children with me.

I have photos of Jeff and Jenny in bed with her at the nursing home. Jenny doesn't remember Nanny at all. She was only 2 and a half when she died. Jeff says he does have memories of her and remembers how much he loved her and he remembers the oxygen in her nose and going to the nursing home. He has good memories of her. And every memory I have of her is good. She was a truly self-less loving mother. She suffered so much in those last couple of years. Every time I saw her, I thought it would be the last. Earlier in my life, I thought I would die without my mother. She was my world...but after seeing her suffer so much. It was easier to let go of her and know that her suffering was overwith. I remember the very last thing I ever said to her. I was getting ready to go back to Virginia and I told her how much I loved her and I also told her that if my children would grow up to love me as much as I love her, then I would know that I had raised them right, and I would be a happy woman. I will always love my mother and it has been 25 years since she died. I miss her so much.

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JUDY BYRD

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When Daddy died...

The last time my entire original family was together was at my father's funeral. That was in July 1968. I was 23 years old. It was a very difficult time for all of us and not only because we were at a funeral. That part wasn't nearly as hard as he had made it for us. I did cry and I can honestly say that I felt sorry he was dead (but only for an instant)...I can't even say that I actually grieved him being dead. None of us were close to him and he had a mean streak. Even our relatives couldn't believe some of the stories we told about things he had done. He seemed to be good and kind to others. It was just mama and us kids that he abused. The only one of us that he didn't abuse was Mlou. She said he beat her a few times but not like the rest of us. He thought she was the smart one. That was because she was quiet and never talked back to him. Whatever he said, she would say nothing...ever!! and the rest of us would voice our opinions and it would only enrage him when we would disagree. Mlou later told me that she felt different at the funeral because we were all crying and she could not. I can't speak for any of the others, but for myself, I don't think I loved him at all. There was mama, her face swollen and blue where he had hit her minutes before he died. He had been being very careful with his temper, and actually hadn't hit her in years. But that day, he couldn't hold it back anymore.

I have heard different accounts of exactly what happened that day. But the basic facts are the same. My sister, Louise and her 2 daughters (Beverly who was about 11 years old and Barbara who was about 9 years old). Beverly did something that annoyed daddy. What I heard was that she just kind of hit the wall with her hand, the way a kid will do sometimes when they run by. When she did, a coco clock that we had on the wall fell down and he lit into her screaming and yelling at her for doing it. It was obviously an accident! My mom jumped in to defend Beverly and daddy and her started throwing punches. From the looks of her face at the funeral, he got in some pretty good blows before it was over. During the fight, Louise tugged mama away and told her to let's get out of here. They ran to the car and pulled out of the driveway. And here is where I have heard different stories...one story I heard was that when they got down the road a bit mama realized that she forgot her purse and at that moment they saw a police car going by so Louise flagged him down and asked him to go back to the house with them to get the purse because they were afraid of daddy. The other story I heard was that she flagged the policeman down to go back and arrest daddy because he had beat mama up. In any case, once they got back to the house, Louise and the policeman walked in the house and there daddy was sitting at the table slumped over with the telephone receiver in his hand. He was foaming at the mouth and appeared to be dead. The policeman immediately called an ambulance and mama rode in the ambulance with daddy to the hospital. He was dead...

I lived in Columbia, South Carolina at the time. That was about 100 miles away. I was working there and I remember it was Jack that called me and when I answered the phone, what he said to me is "Pop went back to his old ways..." He said dad and mom had a fight and dad had a heart attack and died. Bonnie also lived in Columbia then so the next day she and I drove to Charleston. When I walked in and saw mama I was so angry at him for doing that to her. I was glad he was dead at that minute.

Daddy isn't in that family photo that I put here on the blog. It was taken the weekend before he died. Since Louise was in town, we decided to all get together at Mlou's house. Little did any of us know, it would be the last time we were all gathered in the same place. I don't miss him and never have.

It spells volumes that we didn't even ask daddy to be in he photo we took that week before he died. In the photo...I am in the foreground and Louise is at the far left, ,then Jack, Mama, Bonnie and then Mary Lou.

Even more...

My mom never worked out of the house until I was in the 6th grade. I was the only kid left at home then and she went to work at the local high school in the lunch room. She was the "lunch lady"... My dad was very stingy with the money and mom usually made most of my clothes. But after she started working we started buy my clothes ready made at the store. Working gave mom an independence she never had before. She had her own money and she would give me spending money.

Jack was the first one after Bonnie to get married. He had joined the Air Force when he was 17 and was stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska. He met a girl out there and told mama he was going to marry her. He was 17 and she was 15. Those two stayed together for 48 years and as far as I know, they were very happily married all those years. That doesn't happen much these days. Jack picked on me something terrible when I was young. He would do things just to torment me just because he could. Many times he would wrestle me to the ground and have a jar of mustard (I hated mustard) and he would hold me down and force me to eat it by the spoonful. He would do the same thing with vinegar too. He would usually do it when mama wasn't home or she was out of sight cuz I don't remember her ever getting on to him about it. But he would always get the better of me. I couldn't beat him...but I would get him back..I would do things like put my finger in his drink when he wasn't looking. Somehow, this gave me some measure of satisfaction. Perhaps the most traumatic thing Jack ever did to me was to catch a cockroach and he held me down and put it on me. I was so terrified of roaches, and I still am to this day. At first, I thought he didn't have anything in his hand and he was only teasing me but I soon found out that he was holding a live cockroach and he let it go on me while holding me down. I am still traumatized by that. He never picked on any of the other girls, only me. I think he may have been jealous of me since I took his place as the baby in the family.

Years later, shortly before Jack died I had a long talk with him and I told him how badly I felt when he tormented me years earlier. He said he was sorry and that he had no idea it was hurting me emotionally. Jack had a bad heart by the time he was in his early 50's, same as my dad. He was sick off and on for years and had to retire early because of his heart. He died when he was 65. His wife, Jan lived for about 5 more years, then she got cancer and died. She was a good wife to Jack all those years. And she took good care of him when he got sick. They had 3 daughters.

I'm on a roll now!!

Rollerfink inspired me to write more. Actually, I was talking to Jeff the other night and I told him how I used to keep a diary and he encouraged me to write here again. He wanted me to write about my childhood and Jenny has been asking me to do the same. I'll write about stuff as I remember it. There is really so much to tell.

I think the most complicated of my siblings was Bonnie. She was the one I was closest to. She died when she was 57 years old and that was 21 years ago. She had been married several times and even spent an entire year in a mental institution when she was in her 30's. Her past haunted her. She had had a couple of abortions during her wild years and spent the rest of her life regretting it. Her husband had her committed because she tried to commit suicide. That's a whole story all by itself. Frankly, it's no wonder she was so depressed. She old me the story of when she was 5 years old. They had a cat and the cat got pregnant and it mad my father so angry when those cats were born. There was barely enough food to feed the family, let alone trying to feed the cats. I guess that is why he did what he did. They lived near a stream that ran behind the house and when the kittens were born, he told Bonnie to take them down to the stream and drown them. What a terrible man he was...so Bonnie did just that and she says that at the time it didn't bother her at all, but after it was over she couldn't get the image of the kittens with their little heads under the water out of her head. She was tormented by that and the fact that she felt like she had killed her unborn babies. I would hear her say many times that when she died she would get to see her babies again.

I think it was when she was in the nursing home that she got religion. We were brought up in the Southern Baptist church and went to church every sunday. All of us except daddy. I never knew him to set foot in the church. But when she got out of the mental institution, it was different...she was truly saved and people could hardly stand to be around her in the beginning because she was so happy about finding Jesus and she wanted everyone to feel what she felt. She carried her bible everywhere and took every single opportunity that she could to "preach".

She was truly having a love affair with Jesus. She even made up her mind that she wanted to be a Nun!! I don't know how she did it but somehow she had her previous marriages annulled, even the one to her current husband. So that she could take the steps to become a Nun. She continued to live with him right until she died, but it was strictly platonic . The love of her life was Jesus. She never did quite become a Nun but she did spend a lot of time down in South America as a Missionary. I believe she went as a representative of her church. She would take clothes down there and preach and save all the souls that she could. She first got introduced to that area when her husband went down to Belize for some sort of sabbatical. He was a Professor at the University of Connecticut and had his Phd. She went with him and I guess she saw a need for God down there. In fact, she went down there several times after he came home and when she would go, she would stay for months at a time. The last time she went, she came home with malaria. She was so sick and nearly died. After that, she was a type I diabetic and had to have insulin shots daily. The malaria destroyed her pancreas.

We were stationed in Connecticut when she died. I am so thankful that I was able to spend the last 3 years of her life seeing her regularly and spending lots of time at her home. Jeff and Jenny got to know her and Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill would play Mr. Wiggly with the kids and battleship. He was a good and kind soul. Bonnie had been telling us off and on for months that she was having chest pains but she wouldn't go to the doctor. Finally, we were spending the weekend with her and she had one of the chest pains. I had never been with her before when she had this. She sort of convinced herself that it was angina and would take Bill's meds when she would get the pain. That night, I convinced her to go to the doctor the next morning. The children and I went with her and this was a Monday morning. The doctor told her it was probably heartburn and even did an ekg. He hooked her up to a heart monitor. One of the ones you wear for 48 hours and take back to the doctor. John was out to sea at the time so while he was gone, the children and I would spend lots of time with her and Bill. We ate at Friendly's that day. Little did I know that would be the last of so many times we had eaten at Friendly's with her. She went back to the doctor a couple of days later and the doctor told her she needed to see a cardiologist ASAP. He even called and made an appointment for her the very next morning. She called me and left a message on my answering machine telling me what the doctor had said. she said she would call back later that night and give me the details. Well, I got a call later that night, but it wasn't from Bonnie....Bill called to tell me that Bonnie had died. She went to have ice cream with some neighbors when she got home from the doctor. This friend of hers had 2 children and they were about 5 and 7 and they only lived a few blocks from the ice cream place, so they asked their mom if they could ride in Aunt Bonnies car back to their house. The mom was going to walk. This lady said that Bonnie pulled out into the traffic and she watched the car barely excellerate and then it just drifted off the road and into a stone wall. When the car hit, the hood flew up and flames started coming out. Can you imagine the terror in that mom as she saw that happening with her 2 children in the car. Someone else apparently saw it too and they called the fire department, and I guess an ambulance came too. Bonnie had died at the wheel. One of the children said that she asked for a bite of their ice cream cone and when she took the bite, she said "oh, that is so cold on my heart"...and then she slumped over the wheel and was dead just as quick as that. The next time I was at their house, it was so sad to see the car sitting in their driveway and in the seat was a completely melted ice cream cone. Jeff was 10 at the time and Jenny was 7. They both drew pictures at the funeral and before they closed the casket, we put the pictures in the casket with her. Her 2 sons were grown then but I can still remember Bill and the 2 boys standing over the casket crying. I miss her!!

The Beginning...the part I remember

I was 3 years old when my family moved from Alabama to South Carolina. My father had acquired a job at the Charleston Naval Shipyard as a Machinist. He had been in South Carolina for a year training for the job and finally the day came when we would join him. I distinctly remember riding on the back of a truck with all of our furniture. I'm not sure if I rode there the whole way, but I know I was there for a while and there was an old man in the back of the truck who had lost his voicebox for some medical reason and he couldn't talk unless he pumped on some sort of tube going in his neck. I was so fascinated with that contraption. I remember just starring at him. Strange thing to remember, but that's all I remember about the trip itself.

My parents had been poor share croppers in the south, barely living from hand to mouth. I don't remember any of the times when we didn't have food on the table, but my sisters have told me stories of those days. It was a rough and terrible time for the whole family, I'm sure. When I was born, my oldest sister, Louise, had already left home and married. She was 19 years older than me and always seemed like an aunt more than a sister. My next sister was Bonnie. She was 12 when I was born. Then Mary Lou who was 9 and my brother Jack was 6.

Jack hated having another girl in the house. When I was little, he always told me how much he wished I was a boy and how disappointed he was when mama came home from the hospital with a GIRL. I was the only one of her children born in a hospital. She had all the others at home. My mom has told me stories about when I was born and bringing me home and how excited the children were for her to be coming home with a new baby. She said she came home in a taxi and when it pulled in the driveway, the 3 kids just ran beside the car and she felt sorry for Mary Lou because she was so far behind the other children. I refer to Mary Lou as Mlou and she contracted polio when she was about 18 months old and wore braces on her legs and has always been considered the weaker one in our family. We all had brown hair and brown eyes, except for Mlou, she was a blue eyed blond. My daddy used to always say that she looked just like his mother and when I see old pics of my grandmother, I have to agree with him. She does look an awful lot like her, she was dead before I was born, but the others referred to her as Mama Lawrence. My Papa Lawrence was still alive though and I do remember him. He died when I was 8 years old. But I digress...

We are moving to Charleston, South Carolina. Daddy had found us a house at 1801 Norwood Street and we lived there until I was 6. I remember living in that house. I remember lots of children in the neighborhood and I had happy memories of those days...for the most part. The bad memories I have are mostly of when my dad would come home after going out drinking and gambling and he and my mother would get into a fight and he would beat the shit out of her. I remember her having at least one black eye and telling people at church that she ran into a door rather than telling anyone the truth. My dad was probably mentally ill looking back on it. He was very paranoid and distrustful of people, even the family. He was very hard to get close to and I remember him always being argumentative. I have no idea why my mother stayed with him, but she did. He had a bad gambling problem and on paydays, he would stay out late and we children knew the shit would hit the fan when he came home. I don't remember getting beaten in those early days. I got enough beatings once I was older though. He had a leather strap hanging in the bathroom and that is what he always used. I remember my mom would tell me to go find a switch and I would have to fine a little branch from a tree and she would peal the leaves off and switch it back and forth on my legs. I don't remember her ever hitting me with a strap the way daddy did. But my brother Jack got the worst of the beatings. In fact, much of the time daddy would be beating on Jack and my mom would jump in trying to stop my dad and he would start beating up on her. I don't think I loved my dad very much. I thought of him as a mean man and not loving at all. My mother made up for that in spades. She was the most loving and caring person. I was the baby of the family, and I always felt like she loved me best. I think she had a knack for making each of us feel that way.

Bonnie was a wild child and got in lots of trouble and she got married when she was 14 to a guy 25 years old. His name was Bill Blankenship. She was way too young to be married and when we were going to South Carolina to live, she was only 15 and didn't want to be that far away from us. So, she left her husband and moved with us to South Carolina with us. She later told me that once she got to SC she found my dad way to strict on her and she wanted to move out. I'm not exactly sure how the chain of events happened in here. I don't really remember if she moved with us and called her husband to join us there or if they came together. But she and Bill Blankenship found a small apartment. They didn't stay together long and he went back to Alabama and she got a divorce, but she was on her own and would spend lots of time with us and I would stay with her at her apartment sometimes. Those are very happy memories for me. She would always treat me very special and buy me things. I adored her and loved spending time with her.

We lived in a tiny little house and I don't think I had a bedroom at all. I remember sleeping with different people each night. Sometimes it would be in the bed with my mom and dad and sometimes in the bed with my sister Mlou and sometimes with Jack. If I had a "place" I don't remember it at all. But I was happy for the most part. I was afraid to go to bed alone and I remember my sister, Mlou laying with me until I would go to sleep. I always knew she would get up once I was asleep, so I would hold on very tight to her arm, thinking she couldn't get away if I held on. I remember being a spoiled child. I felt very loved and my mother meant the absolute world to me.

We never had a car back in those days and when we went anywhere it would be on the bus. One of the family activities that I remember is taking the bus to the movies on Friday nights. One Friday night we were going to see the movie FRANKENSTEIN. I sat there during that movie and I was terrified. I was probably around 5 years old and when we left the theater Jack would scare me and say Frankenstein was following us. I remember on the bus ride home, I was sure we would all be killed by this monster before we got home. However, we made it home safely and later that night for whatever reason I was sleeping with Jack. Everyone was asleep, and the house was dark. I thought I heard something at the window. It was a high window that I had to stand up on the bed to see out of. I slowly stood up and peeked over the edge of the window sill. There, starring me directly in the face was Frankenstein...I thought it was him, I knew it was him. I jumped under the covers terrified and I think I was just too scared to even scream or wake Jack up. A few minutes later, I peeked out of the covers, and there was another window on the other side of the bed. This window was eye level as I laid in the bed. I looked through that window and I caught a glimpse of him walking by the window, it was Frankenstein. I felt very relieved that he was leaving and still too scared to move from my bed. I was frozen in place for I don't know how long. Finally, I got up and ran to my mother's bed and woke her up and told her the entire story. She comforted me and I went back to sleep. No one in the house believed my story, but to this day, I believe that a man was at our window. In my 5 year old mind, I saw Frankenstein but I will always believe that there was truly a peeping man there.