Unsolicited Testimony

My great-grandmother was born in 1915, and she loved to tell you about her horse-and-buggy. She loved talking about how much fun it was to go into town. We called her Maw.

She talked about her childhood from time to time, how she was raised by her sisters because her mother had died in childbirth with a younger sibling. In the 1920s, this made a terrible kind of sense. She never remembered her mother.

Maw was a feisty one. My mom and my aunt share some of the funniest stories about her. When she got bored, she would call my mom to report that my aunt had been talking about her, then call my aunt to say the same thing about my mom, stirring up drama, hoping something would happen. My mom and aunt eventually caught on and would laugh about it together.

Maw lived in her own apartment above the garage at my grandparents’ house. She was going up and down those stairs well into her nineties. It wasn’t until she fell and broke her hip that they needed to move her downstairs for proper care. My dad and uncle leveled out a sunken floor over a weekend, moved her bed and a few familiar things, so she could feel at home.

Maw was close with my mom. They talked every day, even if only to check in. She talked to my aunt, too. They were all pretty close.

Her health was starting to decline, but she still called my mom every day. Then one day she said it:

“I dreamed my mama is coming to get me,”

I remember getting chills when my mom told me. I knew what was coming.

Maw spent her final week on and off life support. On that last day, we knew her time was near. Each time they removed the tube, she gradually fell toward unconsciousness. They asked us to come be with her for the final time. At first, she was chatty and happy. But slowly, her words slowed. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed.

The beeps on the machine slowed.

My mom held her hand and told her, “Go see your mama now.”

And the beeps stopped.

It was sad, but she was surrounded by people who loved her, and she simply went to sleep to go see her mama. There was grief in the room, but something else too. A quietness that felt almost like relief. She had never known her mother, and somehow, at the very end, she knew she was going to her.

I thought about that for years.

Nearly ten years later, when my paternal grandmother was ill, my mom would call to check in on her. During one of those calls, my grandmother said, “My daddy is coming to get me. I’m going home soon.”

When my mom told me, I thought of Maw immediately. The same words. The same knowing. And she wasn’t sad, she was almost excited.

My grandmother passed away less than a week later, from an infection they couldn’t control. Of course, I was sad. But I also remembered that she was excited to go home. Excited to see her daddy.

It does make you wonder — about what waits at the end, and who might be coming to get you.