This post is a bit late for the International Strong Women celebration, but I’ve been thinking about the strong women in my life since the March 8 observance. I could have written about my three sisters, who all qualify, as they have handled whatever life has thrown at them with courage and grace.
Instead, I decided to hearken back to my ancestry, perhaps influenced by my current book that takes a look at ancestral roots of a different sort. It’s another of those often-repeated stories that I wish I had listened to a bit better. The details may be murky, but the main part of the story is implanted since I heard Mama tell it more than once.
The year was somewhere between 1915 and 1920 when modern medicine had not arrived in its present state. My great-grandmother, Anna Hannah, was diagnosed with stomach cancer when she was about 50 years old, and the doctor recommended that she go from her home “outside Sturgis, Mississippi” all the way to Memphis where a special doctor could remove the mass and part of her stomach. Gram’s husband, a good man but terrified, was staunchly opposed. Her mother-in-law stepped into the fray and loaned Anna the money to go and have the operation.
I have often thought of the strength of character for both of these women to take such a risk. There were few previous success stories for such an operation in those days, and they had to know the result could have been death on the operating table or soon thereafter. Then there was Grandpa Hannah whose male voice should have ruled in the context of that day and time. Yet they were strong enough to take the risk, hoping it would give Gram a few more useful years with her family.
My mother was a little girl when this happened. Gram lived to see her and her five siblings grown and to know many of their children. All my life, I have cherished the two weeks I got to spend with her one-on-one when I was thirteen and she was eighty-seven, as well as her request that I come two years later and help with her care as she was dying with a different cancer. The courage of those two women gave us another forty years or so with her. The idea amazes me yet!