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Childless at age 40, I may never become a grandmother, but I'm grateful to have had one of the best grandmothers a child could ever dream of knowing. Gran passed this summer at the age of 96. I was lucky to visit her several times between tour dates, to hold her hand and say goodbye.
From my birth until her death, Gran guided my life both closely and from afar. It was by Gran's hands that I received my first guitar, the beginning of a career that led me to stages worldwide.
It was in a tiny white, wooden church on an old country road right smack on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line where we would begin a Sunday with Gran. There were only about 20 or 30 members in the scarcely filled pews.
Every pew had a shelf with a songbook in the back. One songbook had about 1,000 songs, and then there were the smaller songbooks in tattered paper folders that barely still held the pages. Those were the books with the songs that really got the church swinging.
Gran's church had no choir or instruments. Singing was the only form of music, and 30 voices can make for many layers by blending harmonies and bending melodies that transcend physical bodies and send you soaring toward heaven.
I loved to sing. I was lucky to sit beside Gran and watch her open the songbooks. I watched her turn the pages, knowing we'd soon be back home at her house, where she already had an afternoon feast simmering to be served.
Suppers with my grandmother
Gran lived on a huge piece of land only a few minutes from the church. My great-grandfather, Gran's father, gave her the land. It was an honor to be Black southerners still living on their family land, much less such a huge parcel. There, my grandfather, Clyde, had built a multi-family house for Gran and their four children.
After church, the house was full of wild grandkids running, adults watching sports, and the scent of the finishing touches being put on the Sunday supper. The aromas were so yummy. Candied yams, turnip greens, baked apples, cornbread, roasted meat, cakes and pies, and the last thing to go into the oven to bake until they were honey-golden with a scent of delight were my absolute favorites, the yeast rolls.
I watched Gran moving around the kitchen from dish to dish, pan to pan until I finally saw them land. She'd be pulling the rolls out and ringing a dinner bell that told a starving house it was time to eat.
The basement and cellar of the house were full of shelves lined with food Gran had grown and canned. But, of course, there was nothing like her strawberry jam. The yeast rolls were terrific but adding that strawberry jam would send you floating on a culinary cloud.
There was also a deep freezer where she kept all types of goodies. I especially loved it when she'd ask one of us to go down and get a bucket of her homemade ice cream to go with one of the pies. The cakes, the pies, and the ice cream were all made by my grandma's hands.
In a hallway closet, there was a secret guitar that we'd all been told never to touch for the first 15 years of my life. I fell in love with the acoustic guitar sound and wanted to learn to play. After one of these suppers, I begged my grandfather all day to let me have this guitar. Finally, after pleading all day, Gran had had enough. She said, "Clyde, give that girl that guitar. You've had it all these years and never even tried to learn to play it." I made a promise to them that I'd learn. And so it was by Gran's hands that I received my first instrument.
Sometimes we'd show up to visit, and Gran would be in her giant garden or tending to the land. She cared for the land as she cared for God and her family. She drove tractors, handled the compost, burned rubbish in barrels, and had a green thumb and tons of plants. To see Gran in her gardening gloves was one of the earliest memories I have of a woman's kindred connection with the earth. To this day, I am a plant mom with too many plants.
As we grew older and Gran could no longer physically care for the land, she sold everything she had. She lived out of a suitcase and traveled for the few years she had left with enough mobility to get on a plane and go. Maybe it was seeing her rolling her bags from city to city that made me feel fearless to tour the world as a woman alone. Finally finding her home again, I will always admire how she gracefully built a life and left it all behind for a new place in an assisted living facility miles and miles away in Indiana.
My grandmother's later years
Throughout the last years of her life, Gran learned to text and loved seeing how everyone was doing on Facebook. I didn't see her as much as I would have loved to because my career had taken off, and my schedule was heavy with touring, but we'd text and talk on the phone.
She spent the pandemic locked down and lonely like so many elderly people throughout the world. So as soon as we could, my sister and I went to visit her. As we sat in her overly warm room, catching her up on the two years we'd missed, Gran would often fall asleep mid-conversation in her chair. I knew she was already preparing her place with the angels.
She was active and healthy for over 90 years of her life. I was on an extensive West coast tour when I got the call that Gran said she was ready to go. It broke my heart so severely that I fell down in tears after a show, devastated and afraid that she might go before I could get back to say goodbye.
It was only in her last years that she started to slow down. With the changing season of her life, I started booking flights to see her every day I had off work, even if it was just 24 hours to sit by her side to share memories and thank her for the many years she gave us. Though she was fading, her memory was sharp, and she'd asked what I was currently creating. I said I wrote a children's book and she would be in it. Her eyes lit up. Luckily, I had the illustrations on my phone, and I showed her the pages featuring her and my grandad. It blew her away.
Between her memories and many hours falling asleep throughout the days I sat with her, Gran would whisper that 96 years was a long time. She'd say, "Tell God I'm ready." I told her I would talk to the angels on her behalf.
Though her name was Bernice, to me she will always be known as Gran. She will always be my somebody to love.
Valerie June is a Grammy-nominated musician from Tennessee. She has recorded four critically acclaimed solo albums and has performed on various national shows. She is the author of a poetry collection and new children's book Somebody to Love: The Story of Valerie June's Sweet Little Baby Banjolele.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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