ME … Gloria Faye Brown Bates … No Aka Granny Gee

 

(Photo is of/owned by Gloria Faye Brown Bates … taken December 2018  ** I have lost almost all the weight gained since my son died … I may be 20 lbs. from my goal)

Today I am going to be enjoying going through this blog to make positive changes to it.  So much has happened since I’ve been here … so much negative and some positive.  Later I will write about some of those things.  The good thing is one way or other … everything has a way of getting alright again … I’m waiting for that to happen. 🙂

I had such a time trying to recover this account because I didn’t have any codes, key proving this was my account.  I had forgotten my password … and on top of that I had opened a new account (I just closed it) … whenever I worked on everything for hours … everything I did took me to the new account.  That was also, part of the problem.

Gracious, you all should write, print your codes down that they gave you (ten special codes) … because they are right … you won’t recover your account if you don’t have your password.

Another tip … I have 5 little books of passwords … I never went back to each to change passwords as time went by and I had to.  If I forgot to write the password down … when I go back to look for one … I haven’t updated … don’t have it.

I feel like I’ve been on a long journey to arrive here.  But, the main thing is … I’m back and I look forward to writing, hoping to find all of you again.

One main change I am making is taking off ‘Granny Gee’ … or ‘Granny’s Colorful’ or ‘Granny anything’.  I want my blog to reflect ME … being a Granny isn’t to be in my life.

That’s okay … I have already coped with the loss of Tommy’s children when he died … at the same time grieving for Tommy, my son.  My whole life from the time I was little made me stronger than I even knew to cope with so much pain.  Life kept knocking me down with such cruel blows … so many deaths … I’ve lost so much in my life.

The biggest loss being … my son, his children.  I don’t think I could have come back after Tommy’s death if there wasn’t some kind of hidden strength I wasn’t aware of having.  As for grandchildren … I won’t be discussing that with anyone.

One child has grown up … her father death left her a big sum of money.  I’m afraid she’ll never-ever see it. That’s all I will say about that chapter of life on grandchildren.  I’ve closed it in my mind.  No one kept my memory alive for his children when Tommy died.

One child did come looking for me … oh my.  That was a brief period of time … the reasons to look for me weren’t positive ones … they were for thinking I had a lot of money.  That grandchild picked the one of the worse, most stressful times of our life to enter it … that grandchild did something so unforgivable, so shocking.  I forgave that grandchild though … I also ‘let go’ completely of the thoughts of ever being a grandmother.

I’m so thankful I don’t feel pain anymore from it.  It was never meant for me to ever be a ‘Granny Gee’.  The only thing special about that name was that Tommy called me that for his son to call me. At least I got to be one … in my mind until Christmas 2018.  I will write that story yet.  I was only a Granny Gee in my mind … in words.  I didn’t know how to be a grandmother anyway.

I write the stories of my life … to remember Tommy, my son … tell you about grief, the pain just as I promised I always would … I don’t think you’ll ever hear me say again … I’m hoping one day a grandchild will come to find me.   If I were well-off financially … I’d move away where no one would find me.  Does that sound mean, flip?  It isn’t … I care very deeply … I will not set myself up for more pain, grief in my life … Life has dealt me enough without me becoming my own enemy.

I have been through so much, seen so much … that I am not going to subject myself to certain things … It would be like banging my head against the wall … accomplishing nothing … but, suffering so much from what I brought on myself.  I am a very realistic person … I don’t waste time when I see that it is just that … wasted time, unnecessary grief, pain.

You can’t force someone to love you … but, while you are forcing them to love you and pretend … they will cause you such unhappiness, pain.  I love ME better than that.  I’m lucky to be here after my son died … no one knows just how lucky I really am.  I’m not here ‘for nothing’. We have more than enough on us at this time in our Life.  Also, I don’t play games I’ve watched almost everyone play all through time … I’m not getting caught up in it.

There may be several people who want to ‘argue’ about the grandmas, grandmothers and such’ … don’t.  I know it’s wonderful for other people and I love seeing such happiness. What I don’t need, want … is someone thinking they could be forward enough to tell me ‘what I need to do, not do’.  I can only say in a nice way … live your life … you can’t live mine because you don’t know anything.

I don’t need negative … and I would quickly tell them … “you have no idea of all that’s transpired through time, I’m not discussing it with you”.  Not only that … when someone comes with the intentions to use you so obvious … you better get that person out of your life for good. Scary things could … and today … do happen.

The good thing is I’ll write in a positive way … I am a positive person even when I’ve lost hope because … I know no matter how bad … things have a way of being alright again.

I’ll continue to live my private life and write, draw and create.  I don’t do any one of those things perfectly … because I am not perfect nor … do I have the desire to be after the ‘3 perfect years’ I wasted in my life.  I’ll write about being perfect again in the future.  I do, however, do whatever I’m doing to the best of my ability plus … a little extra.

Just remember this when you follow ME … this blog is about ME … colors/stories of my life … grief, pain and my stories of coping, dealing with the loss of my only child, Tommy.

Why do I write about those things?  When one writes they need to write about something they truly know to be convincing … readers can sense when someone writes something they don’t know anything about.  I am an expert on ME … because I am, have been living ME all my life.

I’ve had an unusual life … many bad things have happened in it than normal for anyone.  I’ve fought many battles, been on many of Life’s Journeys and am still here living to tell it.  I’ve battled cancer … losing everyone whom I grew up with that I loved with my heart … my husband battled cancer … a house fire destroyed all our belongings, the list goes on.

You’ll see me go back in time to visit old memories to write … who knows maybe something about those memories of mine … could touch someone, help them.  When you feel emotion, hurt, laugh or cry … then you’ve felt a little of what I went through, am feeling as I lose myself in a time long enough to write you a story … enough so you wanted to keep reading to see what happened … how was that problem solved … so on.

When I write … I become my story as I write … I feel pain, happiness … whatever I’m expressing just like when an actor becomes the character he is portraying in a movie … a character you identify with … someone you ‘feel’.  I just happen to be the ‘main character’ of my stories.

I see today … there’s no one left to remember ME any more than to remember Tommy … no family, no one.  My words will still be here so that when they’re read … someone will remember me, know ‘hey, she was in the world too!’ Someone will know my name, read it … maybe ‘feel’ my life through my words enough to know they’ve touched a person that was a good person … years ago. Maybe something good can come out of my words to them from something I have said/written.

I have been writing since 2010 to remember Tommy … ‘knowing’ I had 2 grandchildren who would want to know their grandmother, knowing they would come looking for ME with love in their hearts … not come looking for money thinking I was rich because I published my 3 books. I’m proud of accomplishing that … I’m proud I have 3 copyrights on file at The Library of Congress on my books.

My books haven’t sold … that’s okay too.  I accomplished what I meant to do … I have remembered Tommy … and he’ll be remembered when I am gone.  I sometimes, make golden wire, beaded dragonflies in memory of Tommy … I leave them for others to find … they have a little treasure in helping to remember my son.

I know I am not the best writer in this world … I know that whatever I do  … I do my best at it.  When I wrote those books … it was at such a time when I lost my son … that my mind was on the grief that tortured me. I can’t bear to look or try to read them.  I just can’t. I might see mistakes I made … or so much pain I can’t bear it.

My book I Cry For Tommy (738 pages) … is like a dam that was flooding over with water … my book is where the ‘water/pain’ went. Every character/letter/punctuation was one of my diamond tear drops from my Heart.  Writing my pain, having a place to channel my pain, grief … probably contributed to saving my life, along with Skip and our Pups3.

Remember … when you feel emotion from my words … because you will as I write real feelings, not sugar-coat them … remember to never pity me … I write because I have to … I write to entertain you … I write to let you know how something feels hoping you won’t ever have to experience it … I write in hopes my words might in some way comfort, help someone. I write … taking a journey in time … when I come back … I’m still in my desk chair.  I’m always glad to be back … home.  I don’t dwell in the past.

I write to let people, and younger relatives read ME to know I was a person at one time … a very real person with very real feelings.  I want them to ‘feel’ ME, too.  I wish I could ‘read’ words written by certain relatives who are long gone, that I’ve always been curious about … I would love to read and get to ‘feel’ the ‘real sort of person’ they really were when they lived. I would wonder in what ways I was like them.

One more very important thing to remember about ME … when you come here to read ME … and you feel such emotion from my words … never-ever mistake me as being a person who ‘whines, cries … wallows in self-pity like a little pig does in mud’.  Never think that.  I’ve never felt sorry for myself … I never had time to … I always have had to go with the flow of Life no matter what … unless … I died.

I always describe ME as being like the big, tall Redwood Tree that stands ‘forever’ … weathering many harsh storms of Life.  Standing tall, strong.  No one sees the scars left behind, the strength.  They see a wonderful, beautiful, tall Redwood Tree … admire it for its beauty … never seeing beneath the surface what it’s been through.

I look forward to writing here again.  I’m so happy to have my blog here back.  I thought it was going to be a losing battle … thankfully it isn’t.  I hope my readers will come back and people will want to come read about real life … Me.

Written/Owned … Photos, also … by Gloria Faye Brown Bates