Nell

For the last 10 years or so, my great grandfather, Grandaddy Charles, has been dating a woman named Nell. They started seeing each other a few years after Grandmommy (my great grandmother) passed.

Nell was quite the character. For the first three or four years they dated, she wouldn't let Grandaddy Charles sit next to her in church. It was just too scandalous! Then she wouldn't marry him because it was silly for two people their age to get married. She was fiery and independent, just the kind of woman for Grandaddy Charles. So he pursued her relentlessly and never let her rebuffs deter him. Every time I came home, it seemed, there was a new story about Nell and Grandaddy Charles.

This morning, I called my dad, and he told me that he was at Nell's funeral. She had moved to a nursing home a few weeks ago and had died suddenly in her sleep this week. Nell was quite old, and while her death was sudden, it wasn't necessarily surprising. Well, it seems Nell had one last trick up her sleeve...

For years, Nell had told us that she was younger than Grandaddy Charles. (Not a difficult task, he's 95.) It turns out Nell had been feeding us a line. She was 98 when she passed, and we all thought she was 92!

What's even funnier is that in the program for the service, she had them put down that she was born in 1916...except that she was born in 1910...which it said elsewhere in the program...Her reasoning for telling everyone she was six years younger than she was: she thought people wouldn't like her if they knew she was that old. Nell was a great woman, and I'm glad to have known her, if only through her adventures with my great grandfather. I hope that when I go, there are as many stories to tell about me as there were about Nell.

Posted by Natalie Stone at 2:02 PM