There was an old woman

My great grandmother grew up after Culloden ended the nobility of her family's poor Scottish life style and forced them to come to America; and after the Civil War in America ended her family's wealthy southern life style based on slavery in Charleston, South Carolina.

Great grandmother was raised on the rules of etiquette and the power of manners. She prided herself on being able to polite someone to death without batting an eye. Her daughter, my paternal grandmother, warned me not to touch her when she learned I was going to go meet her for the first time. She said she was very old and gray, but this same woman also walked out of my mother's dining room one day because she "would rather be hungry than improper." The damask napkins did not match.

I was six year's old when all of this came into my life. I had just started first grade and had a gentlemen's agreement with the principal. We shook hands over the decision that I agreed to go to school and high school, but not college -- like my mother. It seemed like a fair deal and in exchange I  got to turn the crank on the huge old fashioned record player in my classroom on the days I was line leader. And that was where I learned my first song in first grade.

I came home from school brimming over with excitement, but my mother had three younger children to take care of, dinner to cook and it seemed my great grandmother had died and I was to accompany my mother to the viewing that evening. She said I could sing her the song then.

It was 1956. My mother drove our old black Buick down to the funeral home and tried to explain death to me in terms I could understand on the way. I got it. Great grandmother was dead like Caruso, our canary, and they were going to bury her tomorrow. I didn't really know her and so this information was of little concern to me.  Of great concern was the new song I had just learned. It was really long and I proudly began singing it to my mother as we walked several blocks from the car to the funeral home.

"There was an old woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she'll die." I sang loudly and clearly and the song was long, but that was part of why I was so proud. I knew it all.  I got as far as the goat when my mother suggested that I might want to stop before we went inside and sing the rest to her later. I was a little hurt. I thought my grandma would want to hear it too, but my mother was firm. "Not tonight."

As soon as we walked in my grandmother grabbed my hand and whisked me off to look at Great Grandmother. Leaning down, she whispered in my ear, "Look at her, doesn't she look peaceful sleeping there?"

I really wanted to take Grandma outside and sing her my song, but the news that Great Grandmother was sleeping horrified me.  I tried to warn Grandma. "You've got to get her out of here!" I cried, "They're going to bury her tomorrow!"

I was quickly given back to my mother who hustled me out the door and back into the night air where I tried to straighten things out and my mother tried to explain that Great Grandmother really was dead and Grandma did know that and she didn't know why she had said she was sleeping. I found it all very confusing, but it did give me a chance to sing the rest of my new song to my mother as we went home.