MISS ESSIE

My mother's godmother--who was my grandmother's best friend and our nearest neighbor when I was growing up--lived to be 110. I remember her most for her baking teacakes, chopping firewood, and drawing water from the well that our clans shared between us. Oh, and killing the random rattlesnake with a hoe in hand. Ms. Pope lived alone and cooked and cleaned for herself until she was 98, when she fell and broke her hip. She outlived most of her 18 children and many of her grandchildren. 

The last time I visited her (as it turns out only a month or so before her death), she was sitting on the porch of the assisted living facility where she resided, having her nails groomed. She was bantering back and forth with the assistant who wanted to put red polish on her nails. She was having NONE of it. I just watched until the ritual was completed. It turned out, this event was a Saturday regular.

When she did turn her attention to me, Ms. Pope told me that she didn't know why God left her on the planet since she'd outlived so many of her children, her husband and all of her closest friends. I felt like I was in the presence of the Holy. She asked me to help her to the bathroom and I did. She could still walk, but was very frail. Her skin was paper thin and soft, and I was afraid I would hurt her with my grip. She wasn't. She leaned heavily on me and expected me to be strong.

She was weak physically, but her mind was sharp. I mean SHARP. She remembered details of my life, of my marriage, asked about my children by name (I didn't even she knew them, 8 and 10 at the time). She told me stories about my grandmother, my mother, and about the area in which we lived. She talked about farming and all the changes she had seen in her world. She marveled that neither cars nor computers were invented when she was born. She was not nostalgic for a world that "used to be." She thought changes were the way the world worked. I felt extremely blessed to be sitting with her and not having to share her with anyone in that early fall moment. In a newspaper article about her when she was 106, she told the reporter that she attributed her long life to lots of laughter and her faith. She said she took life as it came. 

Today as she visits me in my heart and my memory, I honor Ms. Essie Pope who lived her entire life in central Alabama, farmed, reared children, was a great friend, and attended Enon Baptist Church in Childersburg every Sunday she wasn't sick. Ms. Pope was born in February 1888. Her mother was born in slavery. She died in November 1998. She is a venerable Ancestor of the Human Tribe. Ase/Amen/It is so

Valerie Bridgeman
© August 25, 2013