Divorce, Death, The Challenges never stopped

The inventory had been reduced to just want I wanted to move.  The moving truck scheduled to pack me. The storage paid for in Indianapolis. My good byes to friends for a reason, all of them that had reached out and touched my heart when I was drowning.  

Russell & Gertrude Beadle 1932

It was February 27, 2001. The movers packing the truck heading to Indianapolis. John helping me to pack a truck I had rented Michigan bound. The phone rang, it was my parents, my grandmother had died. They wanted to know when I was leaving for Michigan.  I was headed out in the morning. They asked me to stay until they could drive up from Florida and we'd caravan to Michigan to my temporary destination and my grandmother's funeral.

My paternal grandmother. Gertrude Lucille Brown Beadle Schlichter Spatrisano. The only other woman I knew  with more letters in her name than myself.  I have thirty eight, Grandma had forty six.  We both were missing nine letters to make a complete alphabet. We both had not found a husband with the letters J,Q,V,X or Z in their name.  John's last name started with a Z, but I knew I would never marry him to snag one more letter that I'd been in search of.

She was full of life when she was younger. She was an only child raised by her mother and step father, who was much older than my great grandmother.  She was born, December 30,1914, in Murphysboro, Illinois. Her step father owned the gas station in town. 

Kayo and Lou on the road

The family moved to Michigan after surviving the deadliest tornado in US History on March 28, 1925. It is referred to as the Tri-State Tornado. Inflicting 695 fatalities. It occurred prior to  experts rating their severity on a F scale, but many believe it reached a F-5 status.  The family lost every thing.

She met my Grandpa at fifteen, he was born in Michigan, on April 29, 1909. They married May 21, 1932 and my father was born February 1, 1933. 

They rode motorcycles, leaving on road trips for weeks on end, leaving my father to be cared for by his Grandmother Grace. My great grandmother died at 56, my father devastated as this was the woman that raised him.

My grandmother carried a torch for my grandfather until the day she died. He left her for another woman,after 12 years of marriage, most of them, he was absent from as he worked in other cities. Sound familiar? They were in the midst of building a home on Turner Street just outside of Lansing, Michigan in DeWitt.  The cinder block walls had been erected, my grandmother and her two children living in the basement when he walked out on her.  She raised two children, worked in the factory during World War II, went to work for Fisher Body and built the house on top of the foundation he had left her in on her own with the money she earned.

My Dad, Grandpa, Grandma & Aunt Bonnie
 1974 at my brother's graduation 

She remarried, Bill, who was an alcoholic and would beat her.  She would go out of her way to provoke him when he was drinking, knowing she would be beaten.  She kicked him out of the house eventually and he was torn. Months after he had moved out, he reappeared in the backyard holding a shot gun, Grandma standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes.  He was there to tell her how much he loved her and needed her, but she did not share those feelings any longer, so he shot himself in front of her.

My grandmother was a feisty woman. She loved a clean house and when she was not working she was cleaning. She didn't know how to show love. She told me once when I was younger that "Grandma doesn't know how to show you physical love, she shows her love by buying you things." Growing  up, she had four grandchildren, it became very apparent who were those that she loved more.  

She had been pregnant several times after she had divorced my Grandfather and aborted those babies before abortion was legal. She was not a woman who really loved children, children made messes, left fingerprints on the cupboard and mud on the floor. I never witnessed her temper, but I have been told she had one helluva one.  I am like my grandmother in many ways.  My own mother would refer to me as Lucille many times as I was similar to her in the way she dressed, kept her house and her sense of humor.

She married her last husband the year my father entered the service, 1951. He was ten years younger than she was and had dated my Aunt Bonnie, Grandma's only daughter. Talk about a dysfunctional family! Joe and Grandma were married fifty years when she died.

Grandma 1992

She had loved all of her husbands, but she never stopped loving my grandfather. After my first divorce, she took me aside to give me words of wisdom, "Always marry someone who loves you more than you love them, and you'll always be happy. Marry someone who you love more, it will always end in heart ache."  Looking back on her life, she loved my Grandfather  more than life and her two subsequent husbands loved her more than she could return.

My parents arrived in Atlanta late that evening on February 27, 2001. They stayed in a  hotel, John and I slept on the floor in my house, it was my  last night there. In the early morning, we were all driving up to Michigan.  I drove the Bravada. John drove the U-Haul, mom and dad in their van.  We arrived in Marshall, Michigan around five thirty, we had to change and be in Lansing, an hour north by six for my  Grandmother's viewing.  Life is full of challenges.  Some days you breeze through them and not even realize what you have accomplished.