{"id":2534,"date":"2016-10-26T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T15:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.com\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2016-10-26T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T15:43:08","slug":"she-was-her-own-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/?p=2534","title":{"rendered":"She was her own boss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leave it to grief.<\/p>\n

Well that and an aptly timed phone call to change things around.<\/p>\n

I have been experiencing a bit of a writer\u2019s block.\u00a0 Wait, that isn\u2019t exactly right either.\u00a0 I have been doing plenty of writing, just not the kind that appears here.\u00a0 I began taking courses this summer in pursuit of my dream to earn a doctorate in education.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve been writing oodles of papers, video critiques, and discussion posts as a graduate student.\u00a0 Back to campus happened and between lesson plans, emails to my students, and grading assignments, I have been doing plenty of writing as a teacher too.\u00a0 Then there is that wonderfully amazing thing known as my book (to be released in November) for which I have been doing all kinds of behind the scenes writing with marketing and publicist teams. As excited as I am about my first book, this kind of writing is not fun.<\/p>\n

So instead of writer\u2019s block, I guess I have been experiencing blogger\u2019s block.<\/p>\n

But leave it to grief and a phone call last night from the dearest of friends to bring me back to the place where I have laid bare my heart.\u00a0 Journaling on Caringbridge is where this crazy journey to become a writer started, and it was grief (that wretched beast) that taught me my hurts and my ability to share them bring comforts to others.<\/p>\n

So am I back and I thank you for your patience.<\/p>\n

My corner of the world grew a bit dimmer this weekend as my grandmother, Mama, passed away peacefully in her sleep in her own home.\u00a0 She was one of the lights of my world and she was the last of my grandparents still alive.\u00a0 Trust me, I don\u2019t for one minute forget how blessed I am to be into my forties and still have my grandmothers.\u00a0 My Nannie passed away four years ago and there isn\u2019t a day that I don\u2019t miss her either.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"me-and-mama\"

The last day we spent together in June.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

My friend, Karla, called last night just to check on me.\u00a0 God bless her because she listened to me cry and laugh and cry while laughing for more than an hour.\u00a0 She is a true second mile friend, the kind that just keeps on walking when everyone else dropped off at the first mile marker.\u00a0 I am blessed to have several.<\/p>\n

At some point in the conversation, she asked me to remind her how old my Mama (which is pronounced maw-maw<\/em>) lived to be.\u00a0 When I said, \u201cninety-two\u201d, her immediate response was \u201cWow! And she lived at home essentially on her own all that time.\u201d\u00a0 That was just the way it was so this didn\u2019t seem all that odd to me.\u00a0 But what my sweet friend said next is where I started to see the light breaking through my heavy grief fog.<\/p>\n

Kan, how many 92 year olds do you know who lived that successfully on their own?\u00a0 You know, your Mama really got to live as her own boss. <\/em><\/p>\n

I am sure she knew she had “released the Kraken” because after that statement I burst into laughter.\u00a0 Having lived through many grief trials of her own, she had to know it was either a weirdly placed grief reaction or a true Southern story coming on.<\/p>\n

Thankfully for me it was the latter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I asked her if I had ever told her the \u201cboss\u201d story.\u00a0 Even if I had, she let me retell it to her again.<\/p>\n

My Mama Cloie loved gospel music.\u00a0 By loved, I mean LOVED gospel music.\u00a0 She and her friends and family would travel to gospel singings every chance they got.\u00a0 Her all-time favorite was the \u201cDixie Echoes\u201d, but with her Alabama twang it always sounded like the \u201cDixie Eckels\u201d to my ears.\u00a0 My mom always says my\u00a0dad had a few of those language nuances when they met too.\u00a0 The apple doesn\u2019t fall far in Alabama.<\/p>\n

Well a few years back, Mama, some of her cousins, and my Aunt Charlotte (my Daddy\u2019s sister and Mama\u2019s daughter) started attending the Gatlinburg Gathering for a weekend of gospel music and good ol\u2019 fashioned preaching.\u00a0 One of the cousins, who are closer in age to my Daddy, had a time share up in the mountains and this flock of Cunningham girls would travel to Tennessee for their annual get-away.<\/p>\n

In between singings, they would sometimes hit the shops in the mountain town. On one trip, Mama had enough of shopping and told the younger ones to go on ahead; she would just rest on the benches outside the stores on the main street.\u00a0 Every time, the shoppers would come out the stores, there she would be . . . sitting with another little old man.\u00a0 As they moved down the strip, the scene replayed itself over and over.\u00a0 Mama would be on a bench with a different little old man who had grown tired of shopping with his wife.<\/p>\n

As the day went on, the cousins and Aunt Charlotte took to teasing her about how \u201cthey brought her all the way all to Tennessee for gospel singing and she was more interested in finding a boyfriend.\u201d\u00a0 True to our family\u2019s style of teasing, the picking continued well up into the evening.\u00a0 At some point, my Mama became like Popeye and she took all she could stands<\/em> until she could stands<\/em> it no more.<\/p>\n

She let them all know what she thought of their boyfriend accusations.<\/p>\n

Let me tell y\u2019all something.\u00a0 My Momma and Daddy bossed me for eighteen years.\u00a0 Then Reed bossed for more than 60 years.\u00a0 If it is all just the same to you, I\u2019m going to be the boss of Cloie for now.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stealing a line from a Reba (who Mama adored too), and<\/em> I guess she did!<\/em><\/p>\n

I sincerely wish it wasn\u2019t grief that brought me back here to the place of my roots. (Okay my writing roots because only my hairdresser knows exactly what color my other roots truly are.)\u00a0 But I promise you that if this story about my grandmother touches you there are plenty more in my heart and definitely some about her and all my crazy people in my book.\u00a0 And yes, grief gets a mention there too.<\/p>\n

So for now I will be writing love notes to her in my prayers while my heart works to live without my \u201cbossy\u201d Mama.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"2-cloies\"

My two Cloie’s – Mama and our youngest child<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leave it to grief. Well that and an aptly timed phone call to change things around. I have been experiencing a bit of a writer\u2019s block.\u00a0 Wait, that isn\u2019t exactly right either.\u00a0 I have been doing plenty of writing, just not the kind that appears here.\u00a0 I began taking courses this summer in pursuit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[24,1456,232,1457,1458,270,274,304,401,1459,1460,1461,1035],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}