Nadine West Howell 11/1/1919 - 11/24/2006

The day after Thanksgiving, my grandmother passed away. After waging a battle with Alzheimer's disease that lasted for several years, her body decided to stop functioning in much the same way as her mind had done, albeit much more quickly. The roller-coaster ride of this disease seemed for a long time far more enjoyable for her than for the rest of the family. She was the one at the front shouting and laughing while the rest of us spent much of the time feeling a bit sick. But when the ride stopped, as it inevitably had to, she had deteriorated mentally and physically to the point where just about everyone close to her was ready for her to move on.

I'm not one of those people who sugarcoats a person's personality or attitude once they have died. If I didn't like them living, I don't suddenly start to feign admiration for them once they leave. I've heard people at funerals speak so highly of the recently deceased that you'd think the person was a saint, even though the same people a few months earlier were complaining that said person was a real asshole.

So I'm going to give an honest account of my grandmother's life from my point of view as her granddaughter. Naturally that means that I missed a large chunk of her life before I was born and my idea of who she was is therefore skewed. But for sure know this: when I speak highly of my grandmother, and I will, it's not out of "respect for the dead" (like the dead give a shit), it's because she was genuinely a wonderful person and the consummate lady.

Grandmother was born in Turkey, NC which was -- and remains -- basically a crossroads that produces a lot of turkeys. Clever name, huh? Anyway, I don't know a lot about that period of her life because I've forgotten a lot of the stories she used to tell me about when she was a child. I know she had parents and a couple of siblings, but that's about it. When she was 18, she married my grandfather and at some point they ended up in Goldsboro, where Dad and my uncle were born. She worked for decades as secretary of the high school which meant that Dad couldn't really get away with anything no matter how hard he tried; she always found out. Her job combined with her participation in the First Baptist Church of Goldsboro where she worshipped until her mind no longer permitted it meant that she knew pretty much everyone in Goldsboro. Goldsboro, NC is a city; it's not a huge place but it's not a tiny town where everyone is guaranteed to know everyone else either. But everyone knew Grandmother. Everywhere I went with her we met at least one person who not only knew her enough to smile and say "hi", but actually stopped, asked about the family, said something to me like "oh, you're Tiffani? It's so nice to meet you! You're just as sweet as your grandmother said you were" or something along those lines. I remember this happening from the time I was around 4 until adulthood.

My grandmother was exceedingly polite to everyone she met but had the unfortunate habit of drawing attention to her own svelte figure by way of backhandedly insulting her family members' weight problems. I suspect that her vanity caused her to ignore the sometimes lasting effects that this had on others. That is the only truly negative characteristic that I can remember of my grandmother. (Vanity, by the way, is something she gave to me. Neither of us can walk past a mirror without smiling) Not that she didn't do other things that drove us crazy; she was a Mom, after all ;) But most of the things that drove us crazy we could at least acknowledge were done out of love. She was unbelievably stubborn, a hereditary trait that apparently sits on a dominant gene because every Howell since has been cursed (or blessed, depending on the circumstances) with this particular characteristic.

She was truly selfless with regard to her family, sometimes to a fault. She remained faithful to her late husband from the day he died until she joined him thirty years later. This chagrined the rest of the family who didn't believe that sacrificing one's own potential happiness was necessarily the best way to honor someone's memory. I never knew my grandfather, but given the attitude of his children, I would suspect that the first thing he said when he saw her again last week was "good to see you Nadine. Why the hell couldn't you move on after I left you?" to which she probably replied "Watch your mouth, Ed. 'Hell' is such a vulgar word".

Grandmother surely knows that her family is suffering for her loss and I'm sure she would take that pain away if she could. She is undoubtedly finally aware of the pain that her disease caused all of us for years while her body was still functioning even as she looked through us, her beloved family, like we were strangers. That's "the nature of the beast", as they say, but it doesn't make the beast any easier to live with. It doesn't make it any easier to die with either, except perhaps on an intellectual level. Still, knowing that she's finally whole again, and no longer just a shell, does provide some comfort.

The funeral was very short, grave-side and included only family members and her three best friends. After the funeral, the family ate lunch together at one of her favorite restaurants, McCalls. The private, quick funeral was specified in her will; it was her final gift to us... true closure, without all the bells and whistles. She probably knew that a public funeral would've involved much of Goldsboro (she was vain, remember?) and would've been stressful to the family. Even though the funeral was small, she'll be missed by many, possibly thousands.

Rest in Peace