My Grandma Died Last Night...but I Only Knew Her As Nellie
My maternal “biological grandmother” passed away in her sleep last night. I say “biological” because that is how I always referred to her in explaining our relationship. To me, she was “Nellie” and to her I was “Patricia.” Nellie had paranoid schizophrenia, and she was unable to care for her children consistently due to extensive stays in psychiatric hospitals. I consider my grandmother to be Peggy Lawton: the woman who raised my mother from the age of 5, the woman who died months prior to my birth, and the woman I was named after. It was confusing to me as a child to have cousins who had a living grandmother they referred to as my grandma. After my biological grandfather passed and Nellie was cared for by my uncle, she began staying with us for one week in the summers. I did not understand what seemed to make her so childlike or why she mumbled to herself or why she hit her leg often (this was tardive dyskinesia I would learn about years later in graduate school – a side eff...