Peaches

Granny lived a hard life. She and her sisters grew up sleeping on a dirt floor which is where, I guess, the term “dirt poor” comes from. Her father was abusive, one of her sisters commit suicide, and another one disowned the entire family when she got older. Granny worked from a young age to help support the family, but Papa had been her ticket out of that poverty.

The above picture is Granny, Rita Niemann, at the farm in 1947 standing in front of their Ford Plymouth. Papa’s nickname for her back then was “Peaches” though I don’t remember why. I think Granny might have had Irish roots, and while I don’t even recall what her maiden name was, I do know that her grandmother on her mother’s side was full-blooded Cherokee.

Granny was a master homemaker. She sewed all of my summer dresses when I was a young girl, quilted numerous blankets and throws, and her homemade bread was legendary. I have gone through pounds of flour trying to master her recipe, and while it’s been hit or miss, my biggest take away is kneading the dough by hand, not machine.

When Papa first married Granny, she didn’t even know how to cook. Papa’s mother, the German homesteader, taught her all of her homemaking skills, and although Granny’s life of poverty was now a distant past, I always wondered how much of an impact it had on her.

Granny was a complicated woman, and by complicated, I mean difficult. She treated my mom horribly, never thought she was good enough for my dad, and was critical of absolutely everything she did. For those who knew her well, Rita was known to be two-faced, backstabbing, gossipy, vengeful, and downright mean. At the time of her death, she had managed to isolate herself from everyone in the small community.

In the early 1970s, Granny was involved in a near-fatal head-on collision that sent her flying through the windshield of her Volkswagen bug. After a long recovery, Granny spent the rest of her life walking with a cane and half of her face paralyzed due to brain trauma. I once asked my dad if he thought the accident changed her personality or at least made it worse. He thought probably so.

The falling out happened soon after Papa’s death. Dad had since remarried and Granny hated his second wife even more than she disliked my mom. His new wife was an atheist, and dad too, had since turned his back on religion. Granny threatened to write him out of the will because of his beliefs, and after Papa died (leaving everything to Granny), she did just that.

It’s a messy history. Dad was so distraught after losing Papa that he just walked away from it all. Papa’s will was never probated, and as far as I know, Granny left everything to my Aunt Dianne. The land that my brother and I loved so much will be divided between the other two grandchildren, the good ones, so it would seem.

I saw Granny a handful of times as a teenager and young adult. We even attended her 80th birthday party back in 2009. It was a bit of a nightmare. The invitation not only extended to me and my brother, but also to my mom. So, the three of us piled into the car and made the five hour drive out to the farm. Granny was extremely welcoming, as was everyone else, but the visit only intensified my insecurities.

I was an emotional wreck at that time in my life. Thirty-years-old with a pretty good job, but it was the past that kept chasing me down. The reason why I was alone, no children, husband, or boyfriend, the reason why I always felt subpar and unworthy, was the longtime sexual abuse of my step-father. It was a secret I could no longer bear, and when we returned from our trip, I dropped that bomb on my family. So, that’s where I was at during the visit. And my brother? He was at the height of his drug addiction. We were both in pretty bad shape.

Granny, of course, was oblivious to all of this. She kept asking me about my dad, why he wasn’t there, and why he was so mad at her. I just shrugged and told her I didn’t know.

“I keep expecting to see his motorcycle drive up,” she’d say.

“You won’t, Granny,” was my reply.

That was the last time I saw her until eight years later when I found out that she was dying. In late 2016, my brother died unexpectedly, and about that same time, Granny was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, just like Papa. She died in March of 2017 at the age of 88. To be honest, if I cried at her funeral at all it was because I was still mourning my brother. I know it sounds harsh, but I just wasn’t close with her. I’ve been trying to bridge the gap with that side of the family for quite some time. It’s been slow-going but successful nonetheless. No bad blood really, just distance, and time, and circumstance.

After my brother died, I contacted my Aunt Dianne to let her know. She was undergoing treatment for breast cancer at the time, but her husband (Uncle Tony) and my two first cousins made the nine hour drive from west Texas to be at his funeral. It meant more to me than they will ever know.

My mom and I drove to the farm to see Granny a couple of weeks before she died. There’s something to be said about deathbed confessions. She was on a lot of pain medication, but she cried when she saw me. She cried about my brother, and she cried about my dad.

“I guess he’s not coming, is he?”

“No, Granny.”

“I guess I really messed things up, didn’t I? I’m going to make things right. It wasn’t fair to you and Kirk. I’m going to make things right.”

She also apologized to my mom for being so cruel to her when she was married to Dad. She then asked my mom to pray over her.

“We are as filthy rags,” she said through her half smile. It was one of her favorite quotes from the Bible. I kissed her forehead and told her I loved her.

My dad did not attend her funeral. I actually tried to get him to see her before she died, but he refused. We talk about the farm a lot. We talk about Papa a lot, with Dad getting teary each time he brings him up. Not long after Kirk and Granny died, Dad and I were having a heart to heart about, well, everything. He told me about a dream he’d recently had. He was in his shop building something (Dad was a master carpenter) and he couldn’t seem to finish the job. Kirk showed up and said, “let me help you with that, Dad,” and they finished the job together. Despite his afflictions, my brother remained a Christian, and at the time of his death, he and Dad were not on good terms.

“Why would I dream something like that?” He asked me.

“I don’t know, maybe somebody (God) was trying to tell you something.”

I think Dad might have snorted while rolling his eyes.

“Who does that to their own son?” We were now talking about Granny. “If she was such a good Christian, how do you treat your son like that? Just because I’m an atheist she disowns me?”

I held on to Dad’s tear-soaked face knowing my answer meant everything.

“That’s not Christianity, Dad. It’s hypocrisy.”

I’m closer with my dad now than I’ve ever been in my life, and I would love nothing more than to visit the farm with him one last time. I wish he wasn’t an atheist. He knows that. I wish he could find his way back to God, but I would never disown him or turn my back on him. That’s family. That’s Christianity.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6 KJV