I'll never forget the first day I met her. I nervously clutched a piece of paper with the name "Nelson" on it. I cleared my throat, "Are you, Ms. Nelson?"
She looked up from her newspaper, "No, my name's Samples. Are you the girl who is supposed to come to take me to break beans?" I told her I didn't think so because it was January and snowing outside. She then laughed and showed me her newspapers. When she showed me them again in five minutes, I didn't tell her that she'd already told me. I was 17 then, and she was just shy of 86. Over the course of the next few months, she learned my name and I called her by her first name. She later became just Mamaw. Then when she started to protest that she wasn't "old enough to be my Mamaw," we started calling each other "Sissy."
The truth is: I think of her as all of those things: my best friend, sister, and mamaw. As the months flew by, I was offered a summer job at the nursing home where I would often find myself staying late to share peanut M&Ms and sweet tea with Mamaw. We were close for a long time, but months turned into years and I stopped going to visit. I didn't have time to go as often when I started going to college in the next town over and I couldn't stand to see her not remembering who I was. Mamaw passed away without my knowing it on November 27, 2015. Two months later my own grandparents were in the same nursing home for a temporary stay. When I walked by Mamaw's room, two strangers lived there. "Ask someone," Grammy, one of my biological grandmothers, urged. I couldn't. I didn't want more bad news in the middle of a stressful semester. So I waited until school ended this semester, and I read the news.
I never said what I wanted to in the way I wanted to, but I wanted to thank her. I've never had anyone that I could tell secrets to the way I could tell Mamaw. I told her about my friends, my fears, and the boys I thought were cute. And she never, ever said the wrong thing. It wasn't always what I wanted to hear, but it was never wrong. In my first year of school, I would cry the whole 20 minutes to the nursing home, but I would leave laughing because of her.
So, this article is a sweet story, but what's the point? The point is volunteer. People always tell you that volunteering in a nursing home makes such a difference to the residents, but it also makes a difference to you. When Mamaw started telling me about her family, how her arm was hurting, or how no one had come to visit her all day, my petty problems all seemed to melt away. In listening to her talk about growing up with her sisters and brothers, I learned life lessons that I tuck in my back pocket for when times get difficult. My favorite part of every visit was when I was leaving, and she would say, "Bye, Sissy, I love you. You know that." I would always say, "I'll see you soon."
But now I have something else to say, I love you, too.
