My Trip Through LA (Lower Alabama)

A few weeks ago now, my mom and I made a weekend trip through southern AL and spent two nights in the town she grew up in, Andalusia. My dad’s family was in the same county for like four generations (really beyond if you consider my cousin and his children live in Andalusia). There aren’t a lot of places where I feel a sense of roots. My mom’s family, I joke, are like generational nomads. Every generation in my direct lineage ended up somewhere away from their roots. My dad’s family is comparably more rooted. Yet neither my dad or his siblings live close to where they grew up. I digress! I had a good time soaking up history and seeing places I remember from my earliest memories (when I was very small and my dad taught and had summers off, we would spend a good chunk of the summer at my maternal grandmother’s home there).

I also saw my grandmother twice on the trip, on the way to Andalusia and on the way home. She was in the hospital having had a bad bout with pneumonia. I had no idea until I saw her, a week into her recovery, how close we came to losing her. We still don’t know just how much she was mentally impaired by the oxygen deprivation at the worst of it. When I saw her, she was fuzzy on who people were and just generally not well. I understand as of last night this may have improved some, and I hope that’s so. Even as she’s 91 years old now, I’m not prepared and can’t be, to see her shuffle off this mortal coil. But when it is her time, I hope it’s easy and she knows how many good memories we all have of her. Hopefully those memories will be enough to fill the void in our lives….