Nine years ago, on September 29, 1995, I lost my grandmother to heart disease, seizures, and severe blood poisoning caused by a bladder infection and an accidental overdose of her seizure medication. She had rhematic fever as a child which progressed into heart disease as she got older. She wasn't properly diagnosed until 1985, just after her 51st birthday. I became sick with the flu that winter and gave it to her. She became very sick and had to go in for open heart surgery. It was there that her heart condition was discovered. She was in the hospital many times during the eleven years I knew her, but her condition didn't start to go downhill until I was in the fourth grade, during the 93-94 school year. She walked through my family's apartment one day and seemed very confused, then she dropped to the floor. I found out later she had a stroke. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen. The only other person in the place was my great grandmother. We called the ambulance and somehow got ahold of my parents. She spent a long time in the hospital. At the end of that summer, right before I entered fifth grade, she had a seizure in her bedroom and hit her head on the dresser. My great-grandmother was walking through the house when she found Bobo near the dresser, crumpled in a heap and bleeding. Bobo had to go into the hospital again for a long time. I saw her a lot during my fifth grade year. She seemed sicker than in years past, but I had no idea that her time was getting ready to end. In June of 1995, right after I finished fifth grade, my grandmother had another seizure/stroke episode. This time, I was the only one home. I had to turn her on her side, call my mom and the ambulance. I was really afraid that the ambulance wouldn't get there in time. She recovered nicely from that and spent the rest of the summer in good spirits, though she was nowhere near where she was. On September 25, 1995, at around 6 PM, I was watching a movie after school when my great grandmother called. She talked to my mom and told her that my grandmother was very sick and we needed to get down there. When we got down there my grandmother was lying in bed and could not move. She was so sick and it was heartbreaking. We rushed her to Muskogee Regional Hospital that night. The doctors tested her blood to see what was wrong, and they found that the levels of seizure medication in her blood were really high. She also had a severe bladder infection that had spread to her bloodstream. Over the next four days my grandmother declined rapidly. That Friday, my great grandmother and I left the hospital around 11 AM to go pick up Bobo's SS check. I can remember my mom urging us not to leave, that Bobo probably was going to die that day. But still we went. I remember hugging and kissing Bobo, telling her I'd be back soon. We got back around 1:45 to the sight of a bunch of people in the hallway, surrounded by lots of equipment. I found out then that we didn't get back in time, that my grandmother passed away fifteen minutes earlier. I walked into her room and saw her lying on the bed, hands folded, mouth open, eyes slightly open. It was a devastating sight, and I felt guilty for a long time, that I wasn't there when she died, but looking back I'm glad I wasn't. Since I was only eleven at the time, I'm not sure I could have handled it.

As a kid, my grandmother was one of my favorite people. She was a fun-loving, wiry, black-haired woman (used to be reddish brown, but her medication caused her hair to turn black), whom at the time of her death was smaller than I was. Though I never knew her as being healthy, I remember her as being very kind to me. She loved many things, including crocheting, knitting, driving, watching TV, and later on, video games. She was an avid OU fan; she even crocheted afghans with the OU logo on them. She was a devout mormon and she loved listening to the bible on tape. She loved to go rummage shopping on Saturdays. She also loved my brother (now 30) and I very much, since we were her only grandchildren. I used to love playing cards and other games with her.

One of my favorite memories of her is her reading to me. I would sit in her lap and she would read to me from disney books. I loved being close to her during these times, and I loved the stories. As I got older I would read them myself, but she would still let me sit on her lap. About three years after her death, I found a picture of us sitting in a green recliner. I was wearing cowboy boots and a hat with lots of scarves, and she was wearing a striped shirt and jeans. I think I was four or five in the picture. I don't have the picture now, but if I did I would put it on here.

The little girls in the above picture are my nieces: Betty Jo and Jessalyn Lemley. Betty Jo is 8 and Jessalyn is 2. Betty Jo was born two and a half months premature. She was supposed to be born on my birthday (November 14), but instead was born on september 1st, 1996, almost a year to the day that my grandmother died. I like to think that God brought her to fill the hole in our family and to carry on Bobo's legacy.