A regular, run of the mill obituary just won’t do. Not when you’re anything but run of the mill. Not when you’re my grandmother. When you’re Martha J. Morgan-- when you’ve touched so many hearts and souls just by being you, no words on a page could ever fully describe a life so dynamically lived.
Yes, I admit this is a strange way to start an obituary. But who says that obituaries have to be normal? When death happens, it rarely makes sense, and as my grandmother used to say, I’m a big crybaby, so it’s only fitting that any obituary I write on her behalf would be just a little too emotional. Sorry Paca, but I can only be me.
My Grandmother was born in 1932 to Henry Foster Dean and Nellie Clyde Phillips, and for anyone who knew her, the Depression Era was not just a period in history, it was a way of life. My grandmother, for all of her Southern Belle personality and queen-like regality, was at her core, truly a salt of the earth kind of person. She believed in hard work, honesty, goodness, and the Good Lord above all. She also believed in good food, being satiated (she asked everyone she fed if they had “had enough” when they finished their meal), humor, and never letting hard times prevent you from being your best self. I suppose, looking back at her life, that most of these traits had to have developed in her upbringing. Her family wasn’t wealthy, but as my grandma said, they never knew they were poor. And in the South during that time, there were certain standards that you just had to uphold. God, family, and education. Were paramount.. always being presentable and respectful.
I guess what I am trying to say is, although times were hard, there was always something to laugh and smile about, always something thank God for. In her final days, my grandmother was trying to teach me how to stop taking myself so seriously. I see now that this lesson was one she learned through an imperfect life; by a life that saw sadness and tragedy, but also saw hope and happiness in equal measure.
My grandmother was an active child by all accounts. A sporty girl, she played basketball and danced on the drill team. She also sang (with a beautiful alto voice--and man, could she harmonize!). She was smart. Really smart. Freakishly smart! She was great with numbers, and never needed a calculator. I can remember as a kid, asking her impossible equations and being flabbergasted as she uttered under her breath, “well nine from two makes seven and carry the one…” Like magic she could solve any figure.
In 1950 she travelled to California, and the circumstances around that move are and will always remain a complete mystery to me and my siblings. She met my grandpa Dexter Leonard Morgan, got married “in front of a judge.” She didn’t want or need a wedding, that kind of thing didn’t matter to her. She had the man of her dreams--that’s what mattered. In 1951 she gave birth to my mother, Regina Delores Smart who was both her greatest love and the biggest pain in her side!
My grandmother worked in the packing sheds of Arvin, California in her younger years. She would tell stories of how tattered and worn one’s hands can become after days of handling bruised fruit and thorny vines. The pay wasn’t great, but it was honest work, and it allowed her to be the wife and mother she wanted to be. She was never afraid of hard day’s work, and she taught us never to be either.
But let’s just be honest, my grandmother was destined for so much more.
In 1967 my grandfather passed away, making my grandmother a young widow. She didn’t talk much about losing Grandpa Leonard, but when she did, I could tell the scars ran deep. She used to say that when Grandpa passed, a piece of her died with him. She never remarried: she never saw the point. Why marry again when she had already had the most perfect love she could have ever asked for?
But his loss did something spectacular. It forced my grandma to become her own woman. Sometime in the late 60’s as the War on Poverty was just getting started, my grandmother was approached to begin training in social services. She bragged that she personally trained with Maxine Waters, and was a inaugural pilot in this little thing called Head Start. Social programs at that time were as grassroots as they come, and my grandma did old school social work: canvassing, knocking on doors, community meetings. She was a part of the solution. She completed her Associates Degree, climbed the ranks, and by the end of her 30 year career, was the Family Services Coordinator for all of the Kern County Economic Opportunity Commission Head Start Program. In Bakersfield there is even a child development center named after her! I can remember so vividly traveling with her all over the county visiting centers. What respect everyone had for her! I remember feeling so special that I was her granddaughter in those moments. I remember wanting to be just like her.
My sister, April Yvonne Daniel (now Coghill) was born in 1975, and my grandmother spoiled her completely for ten years before I (Megan Marie Daniel) came along in 1985, and another year and a half after that in 1986, my brother, Coleman Watson Daniel Jr. graced us with his presence. But in truth she spoiled us all. Nothing was too good for her grandchildren. She would complain at how spoiled we were, but somehow she always made miracles happen when we needed something, even if the initial answer was a resounding “no!” As much as my grandmother loved my mom, her grandchildren were her legacy, and she wanted nothing more than to see us be our best selves. In 1998 when my mother passed, Paca stepped up and raised my brother and I into adulthood. When I would thank her for raising me, she always shrugged me off and said it she was “just doing what had to be done,” but I know she secretly knew that what she did was nothing short of amazing. She rescued us, and to repay her, each of us followed in her footsteps in our own way. We honor her in our work, in our art, in our careers. I don’t think there is anything that the three of us have ever done that wasn’t in some way influenced by Paca.
Her great grandchildren, Lola Hannah Coghill, and Lennox Alexander Coghill continue the legacy. She was beaming proud to have such beautiful and talented great grands. But it cannot be understated how very much my grandmother was “granny” to everyone she met. She somehow had enough love in her heart for everyone that needed it. She could make you feel like you, and you alone were the most important person on the planet. She invested in everyone, wanted them to be their best. She saw the good traits in us all. She worried about everyone she loved. She carried us all on her shoulders. If she loved you, you were in her prayers no matter where you were or how long it had been since she had seen you. Yes, she was everybody’s granny.
My grandmother first became ill in 2010, and at that point it became our turn to take care of her. So, from 2010 to the present, she lived in Sacramento with my brother and myself. These past ten years have been amongst the richest of my life, and I’m sure my brother and sister would say the same. We watched her age, watched her body get weaker, this is true. But we also saw her iron will become even stronger, her resolve to love harder each day than the day before grow exponentially. While it was hard to watch our superhero-- our matriarch slowly leave us, the memories we have of her in her old age are just as beautiful as the ones from our youth. She was teaching me lessons until the day she left this earth. She is STILL teaching me lessons. Grandma, I will forever be listening for your voice.
My grandma went to be with the angels on December 7, 2018. But she leaves nothing behind and nothing unfinished. My siblings and myself, her great grandchildren both biological and otherwise, and everyone she touched over her long and accomplished life will forever have her in our hearts and in our minds. My heart is heavy, but even in the depths of my sadness, there is a light because I know that my grandmother is celebrating finally going home to be with my mother, her husband, and all of the people she has been missing all these years.
Paca, you will always be my biggest fan, my hero, my inspiration, and the little voice in the back of my mind that says to ignore adversity and keep fighting. You are in every decision I make, every road I travel, and you breathe in very breath I take. I hope yours is the first face I see when my time on this earth is done. I hope--no, I know that your journey was a good one. Goodbye for now. As you always use to say at the end of a journey, “here you are with it, and here you are without it.”
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