Grandmother

One week ago today my grandmother died. Katie called me with the news after Mom called her around lunch. She had not been doing well for a few weeks, but we didn't suspect this so soon. I'll miss her - she was my last grandparent. She is the little girl on the very left. Thanks for the picture, Katie. Starting with her and going clockwise, they are Mozelle Cannon Brown, Dorothy Cannon (?), Carroll Cannon, Ida Mae Cannon Porterfield, and John Cannon.
Grandmother was born in 1919 at Saratoga, Arkansas. When this picture was made, I'm guessing she was around 5 or 6 years old. She was a tall thin girl who loved to play basketball when she was a teenager. She was young during the depression, and like many of her contemporaries, learned to not waste anything or throw anything away that could possibly be used again. She picked cotton with her mother and older brother for extra money, and paid for her class ring that way. She married my Pa-Paw after graduating from high school, and he was almost 10 years older. She lost her first baby when she was 7 months pregnant, but then had my uncle and my mother later. Pa-Paw worked for the railroad and was gone during the week, but would come home on the weekends. Besides keeping house and caring for my mom and uncle, she also took care of their cows and did part time work as a store clerk and mail carrier. She volunteered for the school, as many of those mothers did, and was a camp counselor at times (one of the first at Wyldewood). Mom told me she helped all the widows in the community - taking them to the doctor, caring for them when they were sick, etc. Now, my grandmother had a type A personality. She also had her quirks like anyone else, but as a person and mother, I admire her greatly. She was always a Christian and a lady. She was a hard worker all her life. It's a good thing I didn't know her when she was younger - I probably could NOT have kept up with her! Another thing - when she sold her house and moved to the retirement center a few years ago, she unloaded all her saved up toilet paper, paper towels, and Kleenex on us. We didn't have to buy any of that for a l-o-n-g time. She also had the biggest ever collection of bags - paper AND plastic. Not only store bags, but washed Ziplocs.
Of all her siblings, she was the last to go. It was sad at the funeral to say goodbye not only to her, but to that generation of the family. Well, that's not entirely true. Luckily we still have a couple of great-aunts, widows of her brothers.
My favorite memories of her are spending a week or two with them during the summer when we were kids, her taking us swimming at my uncle's, her yummy milkshakes made with DQ ice cream, her wonderful cooking, and all of her cooking advice to me. She hadn't done this in years when she died, but when we would visit and call out to her from across the room or across the house, she would answer with "Yooo-hooooo." That always cracked me up, but that's how I plan to find her when we get to heaven. ;-)