Page 27 of today’s reading from Hope-A User’s Manual offers some interesting things for me to ponder. I think it’s pretty impossible to feel hope at the same time as despair, but I’m sure that’s not what the auther meant. To me, it’s akin to the AA thought that brings many people to sobriety…”when you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Because when I’m feeling despair I go with it. But I also know that I can’t stay with it for very long.

How does duty, legacy and the good fight move me to live my life (differently)? First of all, I want to be honest. Back when I was going through a very tough separation with my childrens’ father, I felt like I always had to show the smile and “pretend” that things were very good with me. In fact, when I began to tell people that Jim and I were separating, they were so surprised as many said “you always seemed so happy and smiling.” To a certain extent, I guess I was very good at my disguise. But I was sick…as sick as my secret(s) (another good AA saying).

So what I want to do now is be more transparent with everyone. I want to show the struggle(s) I have. But I also want to show that I don’t sit in the struggle for long without fighting back with resolution for a solution. I don’t want to stay a victim or even sit very long with victimhood.

I want to be like Gannie on her deathbed. As she lay dying and unable to move after suffering a stroke, she said to me “if I could just get up and walk, I’d be OK.” To me, that’s the bravest, strongest thing I remember about her, although there were many things to remember about Gannie. But she was a fighter. She didn’t settle. She was a widow most of her life, raised my mother by herself, an

d supported both of them in a business that must have taken a physical toll on her body, standing all day as a beautician. But she left a legacy for me as one of the strongest women I will ever know. She never seemed to complain.

Oh, except when she lived with others of her older age group in the religiously subsidized housing for the elderly. She would sometimes complain about all the “old people” she came in contact with…most of them, her age but sedentary in their rooms,  as Gannie saw them as she walked by them during her daily walking, going miles in the hallways of her building. Gannie was grand. Gannie was

my grandmother. She enthusiastically entered and stayed in the fray, even when the odds were against her. Gannie, in her own way, heard the rallying cry of “Yibambe!”

I’d love to have any of the people that knew me once I’m gone to tell a story about me like the one I tell about Gannie.