The legend lives on!

My grandmother is an amazing woman! When she was merely nineteen years old, she married my grandfather, who happened to be a widow and had three very young daughters. The day she stood up in her white dress in front of all her family and friends and that ring was placed on her finger, she considered herself to be a mother, treating those girls as if they were her own! When she said the words ‘I do’, she wasn’t just saying it to my grandfather, but to his poor, grieving children as well.

She fought tooth and nail to provide a loving, stable environment, and before long, the girls were calling her ‘mom’! Then, out came Michael. Three years later, Paddy, then four years after that, Sean, then came my mother, three years following him. My grandmother was popping them out as if she was a machine. She ended up with twelve children in total when the factory shut down.

Although there were twelve, they never were under the same roof together at the same time, as, when they were old enough, the older ones flew the coop to make a life for themselves. There is a thirty-nine-year-old gap between her eldest and her youngest. Naturally, that meant she was a grandmother before she finished reproducing herself.

It’s not really something you hear of anymore, a woman having a brood of twelve. Back then, yes, it was considered a big family, but nowadays, four seems like a lot. Her house always a hive of activity, the woman doesn’t know how to live without her family around her! It’s both a blessing and a curse, as she is in her twilight years and a nursing home is becoming a probability in the very near future.

I worry as to how she will cope, even though her mind is like a fish in a fishbowl, resetting itself every few seconds, when she won’t have those who she raised being her primary care givers. Sure, they will all visit, except for one, the one she talks of the most, Paddy, who sadly passed three years ago in June. At first, we kept reminding her of his passing, but now I think it to be a kindness on our part, and a comfort to her to think he’s simply in his room as he had been for years.

My grandmother is an amazing woman, a fact that will ever remain to exist, long after she passes. She is blessed with twenty-six grandchildren and twenty-nine great grandchildren to date, who will all carry the story of what a woman she is!