Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul Read Free Page A

experience. That degree was about stepping up to accept my responsibility to follow in her footsteps and pass something on. Thank you, Grandma, for your legacy.
    Jerilyn Upton Sanders

Letters of Love
    L ove makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
    Zora Neale Hurston
    The doorbell rang, I moved the curtains back to see who it was and recognized the big brown truck before I even saw the UPS uniform at the door. I hadn’t ordered anything, but everyone loves to get packages, so I smiled like a kid at Christmastime as I opened the front door.
    â€œI have a package for this address, will you sign for it?” the deliveryman asked.
    I obliged him and said, “Thank you.”
    As I closed the door, I looked at the package and saw the out-of-state zip code in the upper left-hand corner and knew it was from my mother. I removed the thick brown wrapping paper to reveal a small, simple box with no letter of introduction. That was a strange action for my mother; she always, at the least, attached a letter saying “hello” and giving me the lowdown concerning the lives of the rest of the family. A little bewildered, I opened the box and stared at its contents. There were lots of letters inside, some in the handwriting of a small child, some with a more mature penmanship, but all were from me and addressed to my grandmother. Nearly every envelope was sealed with the phrase “In God’s Care” written on the back. A tear rolled down my face, and my cathartic journey began.
    Grandma had passed three short months earlier. It was a shock to the family, who all seemed to have thought that our “rock” would never leave us, but even more of a shock to me because I was supposed to be on a plane that very morning to go and visit her.
    The call came at 6:42 A.M. Central Standard Time.
    â€œLori, I know you are on your way here, and I struggled with whether or not to tell you now or wait till you got here. I didn’t want you to be emotional while traveling, but I could not let you come here and be in a state of shock once you arrived. Grandma is gone. She went quietly in her sleep last night,” my mother said. I remember those words as if they are etched inside my eyelids for me to see every time I close my eyes. Those words haunt me.
    â€œGone, gone where? What are you talking about? I know you don’t mean . . . gone as in dead? I’m on my way to see her; she can’t be gone!” was my reply. “Mom, this isn’t funny. It’s a cruel joke, Mom. Why would you say something like that? My grandma isn’t dead. I’ll see you in a few hours, Mom.” My husband heard the back end of the conversation and saw my legs buckle, so he took the phone from me, and he continued the conversation with my mother.
    Even though I protested to the contrary, my grandma was gone.
    I got on the plane and returned to my childhood surroundings. I appeared strong to the rest of the family so that I could hold them all up. That was the way I was raised, taking care of others. As I walked in Grandma’s house, the smell was the same, kind of like soap and mothballs mixed with home cooking. The furniture was in the same spots as I remembered, and I immediately had visions of myself as a child running into the kitchen to sit near the stove and talk to her as she cooked, sing along to the radio and nibble on whatever masterpiece was brewing in the oven.
    Grandma was a great cook. The kitchen was always filled with the smell of fried bologna sandwiches after school and fried chicken, greens and sweet potato pie at dinnertime.
    Everyone in the house sat down together to eat at the same table and would actually talk to one another without the aid of the television set. And if the phone rang, it did not get answered.
    That vision was quickly shattered by the reality that the sound of her beautiful alto voice would never penetrate those walls again. I fought back the tears and helped with