100 years! I have yet to determine if living so long should be considered a blessing. I often wonder if living past the point of mental awareness in a state of constant confusion would border on the line of a living curse. Life can be cruel, but perhaps living in a state of oblivion is what has caused her to bear the circumstance with such ease. I always told her that she would never be put in a home and that I would take care of her when she got old. The dreams and aspirations of a 7 year old girl that had no idea of the distances that life would take her. Now here I sit, 27 years later, in the half empty parking lot of the Mt.Pleasant Assisted Living Retirement home. Waiting to visit the woman who I hold so dear to my heart for what I have good reason to believe may be the last time.
In all the years of my life Granny had never been a "young  woman in age. Being born May 29, 1914, made her already 57 years old at the time of my birth. But she had the git up and go, of any southern woman of the age of 40, if not even possibly 35. Her white and silver hair, was always done with the most care, curled and feathered up, making that classic "Big Texas  style bouffant atop her thin wrinkled face. Not a day would go by that she would be seen without her Ruby Rouge Avon blush adorn her checks. She had a peach colored mole that was the good size of a large pea, it rested inside her left nostril. She referred to it as here beauty mark, "The bigger the mole, the more beautiful the soul, Kellie-Ann.  she would chime. She wasn't a small woman by any means, I was always in amazement at the grand size of her breasts and how they rested on the top of her belly. Her short torso gave her a very petite stature, which worked to lessen the appearance of the girth of her abdomen and favored her figure. The skin on her arms was thin and covered in brown and eggplant purple colored age spots, reminders of the years she worked out in the...