Journal of a Living Lady #84
I have no political aspirations, but I’ve been told if you want somebody to research your genealogy, just run for office. My late grandmother informed me years ago we were somehow related to Tallulah Bankhead. She was a colorful actress in the days of black and white movies. Piddling on the Internet, I did some research and found interesting trivia about Tallulah Bankhead. She uttered the word "dahling" 21 times in 96 minutes during the 1944 movie entitled "Lifeboat.” Ironically, that was the year I was born. I also discovered that Tallulah’s dying words were “Codeine . . . bourbon.”
Funny what people think about before they die. P. T. Barnum, of circus fame, asked just before his death, “How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”
I haven’t had a chance to say my dying words yet. Well, maybe I have been saying them all along with this journal, but I know I won’t be asking for bourbon. As for Codeine, I am highly allergic to it.
Come to think of it, my mama was allergic to Codeine. Alcohol was a definite “no-no” in our household. When Mama was dying, she asked for water quite frequently. Sometimes she would want it ice cold and other times she would ask for it straight from the tap. I suppose it was dehydration making her so thirsty, but we would have given her anything she asked for. Had she asked for booze though, we would have known she was hallucinating.
One Christmas Eve, my jovial Dad came home from work a bit tipsy. My mama knew how to throw a temper tantrum. Pots and pans flew through the air. Dishes crashed. She made her point. Daddy never came home that way again.
A few years later she was in a tractor-trailer wreck that nearly killed her. Afterwards, she was mellower. More like a feisty dog without teeth. Mama was our family’s version of Lucille Ball. The January before she died, she did an impromptu dance of the Macarena at the local fish restaurant.
Everybody loved our “dahling” Mama who wore polyester suits and exaggerated everything. She was a devoted mother and wife. When stomach cancer was withering my Daddy to skin and bones, Mama never left his side except to attend to necessities. Though just sixteen-years-old when she married, Mama was a strong believer in marriage vows. That “sickness and health” part. She took it seriously. The love between Charles and Martha White was mutual. Daddy’s dying words were to my brother, Charles Lester, “Take good care of your Mama for me.” And he did. We all did.
Since my surgery for breast cancer in 1986 and the recurrence to the lung and bones a couple of years ago, I have far surpassed predictions of my demise. It is obvious to me that God still has purpose in my life. I don’t want to die until I have fully fulfilled that plan.
Everybody tells me I look good. Though I am glad my outer parts don’t accurately portray my innards, my body tells me in subtle ways that I am not well. As for my actual dying words. I am still thinking about those. But this I know. I won’t be copying Tallulah by asking for Codeine or bourbon. I sure won’t care what is going on at Madison Square Garden. I won’t be calling for the undertaker.
Hopefully, my last two words will be, “Howdy, Angels.”
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