Grandma's cancer progressed. She would lie in the back seat of her Chevy Malibu while I drove her down to the Naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, for her to receive radiation treatments. As we drove down Highway 460 and through the town of Waverly, she would point out places to me that she remembered as a small girl.

Eventually, like a foreign invading army, the cancer ate its way through her body, and she moved in with us to be with family. We set up a bed for her in our living room, where I would sit with her as she talked of days gone by.

I turned to drugs and alcohol to kill my pain of watching her slowly die. She had been the sun my world had revolved around since I was born, and she was only sixty-four years old.  I was slowly dying inside with her. My pain and hurt would selfishly turn to anger toward her for the act of dying before her time. And what about the promises we had made to one another years before while harvesting those concord grapes? I was keeping my end of the bargain. Unfortunately, she couldn't keep hers.

Finally, on a cold, snowing February Sunday in 1979, as she begged the Good Lord up above to please take her to relieve her suffering, she fell into a coma and died. I do believe with all my heart that she instantly went to a much better realm, for a faint smile was born across her lips as she took her last breath in this world.

They would leave the farm to me. But I immediately sold it to Grandpa's sister, who lived in Norfolk. I sold it for two reasons: one, I was young and broke; and two, I did not want to go down to the farm and picture my Grandma standing over the stove frying chickens, or my Grandpa as he walked the fields or through the woods. Although, if it had been about a decade later, I might have kept the old place and worked it in honor of their memory.

Next post will be the last of these memories with my beloved grandparents . . .