#52Ancestors - Twelve

Me with my Great-Grandmother, Ada (Whetstine) Thomas

#52Ancestors – Week 12 – Twelve

                I turned 12 in late 1977.  The summer before my 12^th birthday was one that I will never forget.  Up until then life had been blissful.  I grew up in a mobile home in my great-grandmother’s yard.  Grandma Ada had raised my dad and his older sister Claudine “Deenie”.  Deenie was mentally disabled and even at her advanced age, Grandma still cared for her.  We lived in the yard to help them and watch over them.  It had been great having a great grandmother so close.  She was responsible for my love of family history.  She told me stories about growing up and her adventures with her brothers and sisters.  She showed me her parent’s family Bible and little did I know at that time, she had bequeathed it to me when I was six! 

My Aunt Claudine and my Dad. Grandma
didn't allow photos of her as she got older.

                 Grandma’s health had been declining for about a year prior.  She had developed diabetes and refused to acknowledge it.  She cut a toe badly and wound up with an infection.  The surgeries started then.  They amputated the first joint of her toe, then her whole toe, then her foot and finally her leg above the knee.  During one of her surgeries, Deenie got ill.  Her teeth were badly infected.  She got pneumonia and coupled with the infection she just couldn’t fight it.  She died on June 13^th, 1977 at the age of 43. 

                In August of 77, we lost the King.  My mom had been a huge Elvis fan and the day Elvis died was one I’ll never forget.  My mom cried over it as we listened to radio stations playing his music in tribute.  It was the first time a celebrity death impacted me.  It was one of those moments I’ll never forget.

After Grandma’s final amputation, she came home for one day and night.  I stayed at her house with her to help if I could and call my folks to come up if she needed to go to the bathroom.  She asked to go “home” (the nursing home she had stayed at while recovering).  The next morning, she went back to the nursing home, never to return to house she’d called home for over 50 years.    

My grandfather, Harley Thomas.

On the 7^th of September that year, my grandfather lost his battle with cancer.  He was my dad’s dad, Grandma Ada’s older son.  We didn’t see him a lot.  My dad had grown up with his grandparents, so he was closer to them than his parents.  The reasons why will probably be forever unknown.  My dad heard one story from his grandmother and the siblings raised by their parents heard an entirely different one.   Even though they weren’t close, it was the second death in my dad’s immediate family in just four months. 

Grandma Ada’s health continued to deteriorate and she passed away on the 8^th of October 1977.  She was 86 years old.  The last month her health had been so bad we hadn’t even told her that her son had passed.  She had been such an important part of my childhood.  I owed her so much, but I didn’t realize it then.  All I knew then was that I was entering my twelfth year after an incredibly hard summer and fall.  Really it was the end of my childhood.   Before that, I hadn’t had any losses that impacted me that much.  I was too young at the time.  These deaths rocked my world, and taught me the tough lessons about the deaths of loved ones.  My dad had suffered three deaths of people close to him and managed to get through and I entered my twelfth year with new knowledge and a new level maturity.